Look beyond the Beano-esque label and this is a very interesting wine: aVin de Table red from a top French grower made using the solera system more usually found in Jerez, the home of sherry…
Posts Tagged ‘France’
Apr
15
Bordeaux 2010 in Pictures
by Gareth Groves
A final Bordeaux 2010 piece for a little while, with a few pictures from our adventures from last week. Don’t forget, if you are interested in tasting Bordeaux 2010 for yourself, then get a ticket to our big tasting on May 4th – over 90 chateaux including the likes of Pontet Canet, Pichon Baron, Angelus, La …
Apr
08
Bordeaux 2010: Roasted on the Right Bank
by Gareth Groves
The only alarming moment of Day 3 came when the hotel rang to ask why we had left without paying and not taken any of our clothes with us. Evidently, the booking for the second night had gone AWOL. We immediately had visions of everything being chucked out on the street and of Ben Collins’ monogrammed Jermyn …
Apr
07
Bordeaux 2010: The Graves-yard Shift
by Gareth Groves
There’s been one main hot topic of conversation today: the name of Alex’s soon-to-be-born baby. With a surname like Marton the options are clearly limited. The current favourite option is Anthony Leoville Marton. Daddy is secretly hoping it might get us an extra big allocation.
Apart from Marton Jr, we’ve been talking about the weather …
Jan
20
Crozes-Hermitage Domaine du Colombier 2009 (Rhone, France)
My wife has recently been on a nine-month long diet that forbade wine, any cheese worth eating, shellfish and bloody meat amongst other things. Happily the diet is now over and red wine and rare steak is back on the menu. We celebrated with some thick-cut ribeye steaks and a bottle of Domaine du Colombier’s wonderful 2009 Crozes-Hermitage…
Nov
25
Anjou Blanc Le Haut de la Garde Chateau Pierre Bise 2007 (Loire, France)
It’s a great day for England!
Not in cricketing terms admittedly, but we are world champions in the world of cheese. Cornish Blue, a creamy cow’s milk cheese from Liskeard, has walked off with the top award at the World Cheese Awards. Hurrah! My weekend mission is to track some down and celebrate the English cheese revolution. But what shall I drink with our world-beating blue?
Nov
12
Montrachet Grand Cru Roux Pere et Fils 2008 (Burgundy, France)
Montrachet is perhaps the world’s most famous vineyard, producing tiny quantities of mouth-watering Chardonnay to be sold at eye-watering prices. The vineyard itself is a rather unassuming plot of rocks and earth to look at it but the qualities this terroir bestows on the grapes its produces are legendary.
Nov
09
Burgundy 2009 Day 1: Big Macs & Corton Charlies
by Gareth Groves
We had touched down two hours earlier. In that time we had managed to get into the wrong hire car, drive to the wrong hotel and tried desperately to find a restaurant that had shut many hours earlier. Timmy (our resident MW) was hungry and sweary. So off we went in a mad dash to find the last eatery still …
Oct
21
Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons ‘Les Minots’ Patrick Piuze 2008 (Burgundy, France)
Piuze is an outsider in Burgundy. A French-Canadian Montreal wine bar owner turned micro-negociant. In a recent article Jancis Robinson called Patrick “a truly thrilling new producer of hand-crafted Chablis.” High praise for someone currently vinifying on his third solo vintage…
Sep
30
Morgon Marcel Lapierre 2009 (Beaujolais, France)
2009 is a fantastic Beaujolais vintage. Not that anyone really cares. Unlike Bordeaux 2009 there are no hyped-up sales campaigns, no 100 point Parker scores and sky-rocketing prices, no-one talking about investment potential or a booming Far East market. It is a crying shame. Good Beaujolais is one of the wine world’s best kept secrets…