Blog Format

We need to sort out the format a bit better me thinks - nature of the blog is wine and food commentary so we not only need to be able to post quick and constant tasting notes without it getting cluttered but also be able to go back and comment on old posts and have it show up when this happens - ie re-tasting wines re-visiting old vintages - same restaurant etc etc - already starting to get lost on the comments from older posts - what you think or rather what do your plethora of consultants think - keeping in mind more interested in this being a self-educational reference tool rather than a random soap box

Hermitage Blanc, Domaine des Remizieres

And so to continue my recent obsession with southern French whites, today I picked out a 1999 Hermitage Blanc from Domaine des Remizieres from my friendly local wine merchant, Howard Silverman at Howard's Wine Cellar in Lakeview, Chicago, from where I buy a lot of my wine. The bottle had been sitting there for a couple of weeks, I'd been eying it up since I first saw it, and today I made my move. Anyway, to sum up, this wine was completely AWESOME!! I absolutely love this style, the very full body, the way the nose toys with you, giving you a hint of the pleasure that your taste buds are about to experience, then the way the intensity of the flavour builds and builds on the mid palate and explodes into a long and glorious finish, leaving you wishing that the bottle would never end.. Hmmm... Well, the nose had peach and floral notes (rosewater) and a tiny hint of an oxidative sherry style, and this was followed on the palate by more stone fruit (peach and apricot) plus lemony citrus notes, and again this ever so slight nutty, oxidative sherry taste, which I love. I'm pretty sure that this is a deliberate style, and I guess you either love it or you hate it. There was also some very beautifully-integrated oak, and some very well-balanced acidity, and all of these things combined to make a truly splendid wine. I feel that this wine would also keep for a good few years yet, there seems to be plenty of evolving flavours there, and good acidity to prop it up, so if you can find it then buy, buy, buy! Actually don't, less is more after all.. I had it with some simply-prepares veal escalopes and it more than stood up to it.

Tomorrow I'm roasting a very large, saliva-inducing bone-in prime rib of beef. Just because I want to, and I can't wait. Not sure what I'm going to drink with it yet, I have some excellent S Rhone wines here, we'll see.

And in case you were wondering, it has been a fruit day today, as it will be tomorrow, the best day to drink your wines. Any old excuse eh...

Wine of the Month - I Love Sauvignon Blanc

Discovering a new found love for Sauvignon Blanc it would seem of late with 2 making it into my top 5 this month - a much maligned variety thanks to the Kiwi invasion but when its fine as with most grapes its very lovely indeed - This one is spectacular the 1995 Francoise Cotat cuvee speciale 'Les Culs de Beaujeu' Sancerre. Amazing contrast between nose and palette - on opening extremely aggressive nose little evidence of fruit except austere citrus masked by very high sulphur which took nearly on hour to blow of after caraffing - but the pallette was incredible - pink grapefruit and lime peel citrus with distinct softer peach fruit side, most notably a stunning creamy texture with a seductive sweetness balancing the intense wet pebble chalky mineralty throughout - beautiful mouthwatering acidity and fantastic length, absolute pleasure to drink but the attacking severity of the nose and high acidity suggests its got a long future - difficult to find as is a special cuvee only made in exceptional years but if you see it buy it.
If you ever meet a Kiwi again who insists they make "the best sauvignon blanc in the world" - and I have met many - it is your duty to slap em round the side of the head.

82 Cheval Blanc and vintage ratings

Tasted an 82 Cheval Blanc for the first time tonight - bottle was from very good provinence and in good condition but was pretty disappointed - on opening very lovely nose, classic delicate earthy tarry notes crushed red fruit sweet cherry and smokey tobacco but a little muted - palette was broad well balanced but a bit lean and noteably disjointed - returned to it 2 hours after decanting expecting it to have opened up but nose had noticably closed down palette was definatly more austere and acidity was now completely out of wack very suprised to see it fall over like that - was expecting much better things as not long ago had the 78 which even though from a suposedly much lesser vintage than the "legendary" 82s that was simply one of the best Bordeauxs I've ever tasted - soaring warm complex nose, hugely generous velvety texture and fabulous length really a thing of beauty - the old saying that there are no great vintages just great bottles is definitely becoming more and more apparent - generalising about vintages based on critics ratings really does seem to be a complete waste of time - a very learned colleague noted hes seeing more and more of these great 82s falling over - much like the highly rated 90s in Champagne and i've definatly seen a few of these lately that are flabby messes

Pinot Tasting Review

Well, I have very sad news to report. The Pinot and boeuf bourgignon tasting that I attended last night with my friend Kristen did not live up to my hopes and expectations at all. The wines were not very exciting, apart form 2 notable exceptions and the boeuf bourg was very sub-par. The 2 notable wine exceptions were a 2006 Bourgogne Rouge from Rene Leclerc, which, for a basic red Burgundy, had lots of concentrated flavours of fruit, earth and spice in very good harmony, backed up with good acidity and supple tannins, and was definitely the best value wine there for $22 a bottle, and drinking very nicely right now, though I'm not sure how long the bottle had been open. The other noteworthy wine was a 2005 Domaine Latour-Giraud Volnay Clos des Chenes, for around $55 a bottle I think. It was quite reserved on the nose, but on the palate it was considerably more concentrated, if a little tight, with complex flavours and excellent minerality supported by a good levels of acid and very fine tannins. This one is definitely built to last. I feel that it's is starting to close down a little, so stick it away if you have any.. The other wines were all pretty characterless, generic Pinots, with no outstanding traits. There was the usual selection of crowd-pleasing, big, fruity new world efforts, made to be drunk pretty young, and also some cheaper Burgundies with no real distinguishing features. Shame.

So to sum up, out of about 25 wines, only 2 of them got my juices flowing, which is really a piss-poor ration to be honest. In fact, if I'm being brutally honest, the best thing about the tasting apart form the aforementioned 2 wines, was the brie and charcuterie that they provided for us. They did give us some very nice sausage.. And if you needed any other indication of how little we thought of the wines, we ended up leaving the Pinot Noir tasting with a bottle of a 1999 Reserva Rioja for to take to dinner with us. D'oh..! How insulting.. And all this on a flower day too.

Whats a Root Day

Basically my dearest of Yankee friends, monkey magic there is talking about the biodynamic calender - theory goes roughly that all plant growth and development is effected by not only the phases of the moon but its passage through the 12 constellations of the zodiac - not that weird an idea if you think about the gravitational influence of the moon, not just on tides but on things like underground water tables and rising of sap in plants - Plants are divided into 4 major groups Root - which corresponds to the Earth element is linked to 3 zodiac signs and the quarterly phases of the moon - ie when the moon passes in front of these constellations - there is also Leaf, Fruit (ie grapes/wine) and Flower for the other 3 phases and corresponding constellations - when to sow the crop prune harvest and - more controversially went to drink or not to - corresponds to these phases - black magic pagan hippy weirdos or simply being more in tune with mother earth and the cosmos - the debate continues - hope this clears things up for you :-)

Welcome to our Antipodean Brothers

Greetings and Salutations to our friend on the other side of the great pond - as this is a discussion of all things fine in the world of food and wine I look forward to your learned contributions, especially concerning the world of spirits, cocktails and the finest watering holes offered to man - a subject I believe you know a little about.

Pinot Tasting Tonight

Morning campers, sorry no post yesterday. I sadly spent the entire day writhing around on the couch in agony following an evening in the pub drinking beer. The first place I have found in the US with real, live hand pump beer will most likely be the last time I try that out. Call me a lightweight or whatever you want, but I'm pretty sure that I shouldn't be feeling this bad after only 5-6 beers. Something tells me that the dive bar I was in doesn't clean its beer lines very often. It seems that every time I go to the pub here and drink draft beer, which isn't very often, I feel terrible the next day regardless of how much or little I drink. This didn't happen in England when I was there over Christmas. I guess it's bottled beer or no beer here, which will basically be no beer, because as we all know American beer is disgracefully shocking. Even the decent micro-brewed beers are ruined by being served as cold as possible without freezing.. There's clearly a multitude of reasons then why I drink a lot of wine..

So, tonight I am going to a pinot and boeuf bourgignon evening at a local wine merchant. I am hoping that there will be a slant towards Burgundy, obviously, especially seeing as though they are furnishing us with boeuf bourg, but we shall see. And it's a flower day now, so hopefully all will be good. More later..

CellarTracker Virgin

I have just discovered the full joys of CellarTracker, and have just spent a few extremely pleasurable hours cataloging my wines on their website. I've been using it for a while for user reviews, but I finally decided to use it for its main purpose, to catalogue my wines.. What a splendid idea!! I mainly love the fact that I can now write my own notes on a wine, and it will all be stored online, so no need to write them down somewhere and risk losing them, or no need to screw around with crappy iphone apps, because, let's face it most of them are indeed crap. And CT is very user-friendly too, I'm a techno-retard and I still manged to figure it out quite easily.

So, to any strays who happen to read this and who happen to have a wine cellar, I fully recommend this site (see link below). Obviously that doesn't mean you Nahthern, because I realise that you are far too pikey to have such a thing as a wine collection, but to anyone else who isn't a homeless gypsy, please give it a go.

Anyway, it's still a root day, so I'm going to the pub for beer and burgers tonight, to meet my hillbilly friend from Wisconsin.

El Bulli to close!

Oh crap - just read the news El Bulli is to close for 2 years 2012-13 for sabbatical and will apparently reopen in a different format - cant guarantee Im going to be alive in 2014 think we should make a concerted effort to get a table there next year though not sure how, the world and his wife wanted to eat there anyway, god knows it'll be impossible to get in now

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jan/26/ferran-adria-el-bulli-closed

Site Evolution

Ooh luck our first persons visited the site how exciting, obviously not sufficiently impressed to become a "follower" - peasant - right added a bunch of stuff I found add and delete as you feel appropriate - tried moving stuff around but still feels not particuarly easy on the eye - will leave in your infinitely more capable hands - also search thingy on the bottom does'nt seem to work dont know if we need it but I quite like the useful websites link - cant help thinking we still need a better way of categorising posts - I want too start putting up lots of quick tasting notes - not really for comment just quick reference and homework purposes and it'll start looking way too cluttered - whatcha thunk bubba

Bollocks, Tits and Arse

Huge disappointment, not very happy. I recently purchased a few bottles of what was one of my favourite New Zealand Pinots, we tried a bottle of it last night and it turned out to be crap. I am not impressed. After going through the trouble of purchasing it in the UK, and then bringing it back to Chicago with me, the least it could do would be to provide me with some pleasure. The wine in question is called Greenhough Hope Vineyard Pinot Noir 2003, and I still have 6 bottles left. I am hoping that it is suffering from 'transport shock', because this was a splendid wine when I last tasted it around a year ago. Yesterday, though, it smelled and tasted like a nasty Californian Pinot: a flabby fruit-bomb. The previously velvety texture had transformed into nothing more than a lifeless glass of what resembled Ribena. Bollocks. Maybe it was just a bad bottle, I really hope so, because I have always been a champion of the Kiwi Pinot scene, and of this winery, and I don't want to be let down.. It was a root day with ascending force yesterday too, I think I'll grab another bottle that has been in the 'cave' for a while, and try it on a fruit or flower day, maybe that'll help..

1970 Lafite Rothschild

1970 Lafite Rothschild - not decanted - Palish colour with faded brick orange rim but holding colour quite well obviously fully mature but attractive nose very subtle cassis and mineral if touch medicinal very light in body light tannins just in evidence but acidity rapidily increasing over the 45 minutes after opening masking any fruit - looked good on opening all things considered but have to drink pretty quick - over the hill but still enough going on to hold interest - more historical curiosity now me thinks

The Influence of Parker, and Another Moan

I just want to have a bit of a moan about Robert Parker and his far-too-great influence on wine prices. Last summer I decided to purchase some wine from the excellent 2007 vintage from the Southern Rhone, and I went for a small Chateauneuf Du Pape producer, Domaine de Saint Prefert (the white of whom we drank at Aria), and their top cuvee, Collection Charles Giraud, which I managed to get for $59 a bottle. At the time Parker gave it a 95-98 rating, and since then he has upped its rating to 100. Anyway, I looked up this wine today, and now it's selling for between $235-750(!) a bottle at auction! Just goes to show that a positive rating from Mr. Parker puts great wines like this out of reach of the ordinary consumer, and this isn't even a classed growth Bordeaux or a big name CNDP like Clos des Papes either. I'm bloody glad I struck while the iron was hot and bought when I did..

This producer actually is one of my favourite from CNDP , Isabel Ferrando is the owner and winemaker, and she produces outstanding wines, the white is made from 80-85% very old clairette vines and is superb, and her reds are typical CNDP blends, with the top cuvee being 60% grenache and 40% mourvedre. I am not, however going to recommend them to you as they are very small production, and I want less competition for their purchase.

On a totally different note, I hate the way my American computer tells me that I can't spell favourite with a 'u', or, much worse, judgement with an 'e'. Utterly retarded.. Who gave them their bloody language anyway?

Some Interesting Southern French Whites

So my dull and ignorant friend it's my turn to be boring tonight. I've had a couple of very interesting French whites from the Languedoc-Roussillon region over the last couple of nights. First one was somethig I've never heard of, a 2007 Carignan Blanc(?) form a producer called Domaine des Milles Roses in Roussillon, costing around $22. Apparently there were only around 1000 hectares of this grape planted in the whole of France in 2000, and in fact the winemaker isn't exactly sure what the grape truly is, so he decided to call it Carignan Blanc. So there. Anyway, it has a very rich nose, with lots of floral notes, with honey, lemon, and what I believe is characterised as beeswax, and after some exposure to air some strong notes of white peach, in fact the next day (today) the peach was the predominant feature, and, dare I say it, almost like candied strawberries.. The wine was full-bodied on the palate, and reflected all of the aromas, with the peach and honeysuckle being the predominant flavours. There was also a little minerality on the finish. Sadly though, I felt the acidity was lacking slightly, which left it a little out of balance given the full body, but overall it was a very good wine.

The second wine was from a producer call Ermitage du Pic St. Loup, in the Herault region of the Languedoc. I vesited this place a year ago, and was stunned by the purity and freshness of their wines, especially the white. It was their 2007 Cuvee St Agnes Blanc, which is made up of 50% Roussanne, 20% Clairette, 15% Marsanne and 15% Grenache Blanc, just to be geeky. The aromas just leap out of the glass at you, just begging you to take a sip, it has a very complex nose of honeysuckle, blossom, honey, peach and spice. On the palate it has a little less body than the Carignan Blanc, but still pretty full, and it has a viognier-like oily texture. The fruit flavours and honeysuckle are strong on the mid-palate, and the long, lingering finish has strong minerality and a touch of lemon, and this time the acidity is at just the right level to make a perfectly balanced wine. What is so great about this wine is the amazing freshness and purity of all the flavours, a truly splendid wine, especially when you consider it cost less than 13GBP (no bloody pound sign on stupid US keyboard). I would love to tell you where you can buy this wine, but there is only 1 place on winesearcher to get this vintage, and sadly I bought all their remaining bottles last week, and imported them illegally back to Chicago. Hopefully the 2008 will be as good..

So basically screw all your 1st growth Bordeaux that cost hundreds and have a slurp on a less-than $20 bottle of Southern French plonk. It's always so much more satisfying when you find cheap wines that give you immense amounts of pleasure as there's so much further to fall with stupidly-expensive, ultra-premium bottles.. And here endeth the lesson of St. Alastair, renowned philosopher and sage.

I promise not to be boring again either.

Araujo

Tried an awesome Yankee wine tonight - 2006 Araujo Eisele vineyard sauvignon blanc, immediately interesting on opening but a bit closed - was splendid 2 hrs after decanting warm citrus and light floral notes - which is probably the touch of viognier in there - with intense graphite minerality lovely balance and acidity and perfectly integrated oak - tasted blind would have definately have said very fine Loire, same funky savoury style - almost Dageneau level if lacking a bit in the power and length - too young but very bleedin good - be very interested to see older vintages - and well worth trying to find as a hell of a lot cheaper than their reds

Special Skills

Splendid, I have figured out how to allow myself to create posts by using my special Chinese email-hacking skills, and accessing your account and inviting myself to be an author. I'm the man (and so's my wife who actually thought of it..). A post to follow shortly regarding a very interesting Southern French White from Roussillon.

1993 Haut Brion

1993 Haut Brion - Quite forward nose on opening very pleasant and attractive typical earthy coffee with touch citrus but lacking in great complexity and intensity - nicely balanced but bit thin, drying finish and acidity a bit out of wack - still lovely wine on nose but definatly lacking a bit on the palette reflecting the off vintage I guess but you wouldnt refuse a second glass.

Restaurant Reviews

Just a quicky as ate there quite a while ago but congratulations to Brett Graham only the second Aussie chef to gain any Michelin stars and he just got 3 - 2 stars for the Ledbury which is still currently the best meal i've had in London so far and also 1 star for the Harwood Arms in Fulham which was also a great meal, very good service and a splendid little wine list - one of the few places deserving of the term "gastropub" - as opposed to say somewhere that thinks sticking a bit of samphire on top of their burgers with a side order of pretty but surly waitress is reason enough to double their prices - ie: Ramseys York and Albany in Camden.
Further congratulations are in order because it really annoys the French when jumped up peasants from a backwater like Australia dare to take one of their stars, which can only be a good thing eh - so goodonya mate.

1985 Latour, Mouton and Haut Brion

Ok for the purpose of this experiment my opening blog subject was somewhat weak, ie: merely calling you fat, and your response was impressive, ie: talking about food and wine, so now I intend to redress the balance somewhat and comment on a little wine I tasted the other day.
A mini flight of 85s namely 1st growth Bordeaux - Latour, Mouton Rothschild and Haut Brion.
Not tasting these wines blind quite frankly is always difficult when you are aware of the label and the vintage but it is easier to think about these wines dispassionately when one, they are next to each other which is rare, and two more importantly you have'nt had to pay for it.
So to the wines - all some 3 hours after decanting. In order of my preference last to first - the Mouton - Black cherry colour little rim fade fairly dense much like the Latour - on the nose sweet fruit touch herbacious but much more muted than the other 2 - balanced complete, mouth filling and expressive nice finish but not great length - really lovely Cabernet but showing quite one dimensional especially in present company - will it improve who knows - but dont drink it now certainly with only 3 hrs decanting - is this worth the price - umm no its good but come on - cool labels though adds at least 100 quid to the bottle.
Latour - much more attractive on the nose but still noticably closed to me - brambley dark fruit with definate classic cedar and lead minerality - slighty lighter in body and silky texture superbly balanced and lovely long finish but seems still youthful and frustatingly beyond potential - returned to small glass 24hrs after decanting - on palette not cool but nose is soaring, brilliant warm velvety gorgeous and intense and quite frankly extremely exciting - at 25 years old you are commiting infanticide if you are drinking this wine - I Think
And
Haut Brion - bleedin brilliant - Paler than the other 2 with definate brick red hue - nose is just sexy - earthy undergrowth and roast coffee and tobacco - very savoury textured and touch smokey concentrated and complex with great depth very expressive and drinking much better than Latour and Mouton - this is a wine you just want to keep smelling rather than drinking - balanced and poised fantastic finish and very long - i think i want to cry - drink now if you can find it and afford it but sure will happily keep improving for some time to come - I Think
One things for sure - seeing 3 1st growths together at 25 years old from a top vintage there is undoubtably a huge difference stylistically between them and the numptys that can afford to buy these wines invariably drink them too young - from these bottles the Haut Brion stood out a mile is ready and is great - the Latour is obviously great but not ready, not sure when - and the Mouton not looking great and who knows - ether way learning a greater appreciation of the the stupidly priced Bordeaux's - over to you Fat Boy

Let the Games begin

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