Visited Fraser Gallup in April 2018 and loved their wines. I bought the Palladian and am looking forward to broaching in a year or 4
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Rather pleasant Central Otargo Pinot from Andrew Donaldson Akitu, served slightly chilled great fruit wild strawberry on the noise making savoury mid palet , lovely finish
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Gonna get really avant-garde here, with a rosé. This 2018 Provencal from Waitrose is really rather good:
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This lovely 2015 Pomerol is really too young to drink now, but it is wonderfully fresh and moreish, and it reminds me of a Pomerol tasting I went to a year ago where they started with this Ch and the ultimate wine was a magnum of 1983 Ch Petrus. I couldn’t resist picking this out of the wine fridge to enjoy while we still don’t know what lies in front of us.
Best
David
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Ah yes we did have an early summer.
Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc “cellar selection” Marlborough 2019
Delightful nose of rockmelons and grapefruit. Similar on palate. Very vibrant and alive, so much flavour. A real “Liverpool kiss” wine that grabs your attention and only £7 in NZ
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Huw, Your story reminds me of drinking a bottle with a friend of Penfolds Rawson’s Retreat which I think Oddbins were selling for about £5.35 in 1998. She’d stored it for six years after buying it. Pretty sensational.
I’m glad your Guigal was good. It is still my go to benchmark Rhone. (when on spesh.)
C.
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1999 Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes Domaine Alain Hudelot-Noellat
Opened to enjoy while video-chatting with a couple of friends, she was on Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc, he was on beer. In decanter and glass for an hour before tasting. Lovely nose, raspberry, strawberry jam, minty leaf and peppery spices. Medium weight palate, very slightly light weight in the middle, but so so lovely. Superbly balanced, good acidity and light tannins frame sweet red fruits, strawberry and raspberry, earthy mushrooms, white pepper, a beautiful red fruit and white pepper perfume lingers in the mouth for a long time. Finishing the bottle after 4 hours, it was complex and gorgeous, yes it lacks the concentration of top premier and grand crû wines, but it’s a beautiful drink, so so drinkable and so lovely.
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Time to drink the good stuff like there’s no tomorrow* #15
Domaine Saint Jean ‘Li Vecce’ 2014
Bellet, France. 14%
Bellet is my nearest wine appellation, in the hills above Nice. But currently it is as distant away as any far-flung Southern Hemisphere region. It’s only 63ha, and home to 9 producers, for most of whom it is not their main livelihood.
The grape varieties are niche, too, with reds based on Folle Noire, and rosés from Braquet (neither of which grow anywhere else). The whites, however, are based on Rolle (aka Vermentino) the great white grape of the Mediterranean. For me, the best Bellet wines are the greatest expression of this variety, and this wine is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for that assertion.
Nathalie and Jean-Patrick Pacioselli are in some ways the new kids on the block with a very small smallholding of 2.5ha in three places in the appellation. They first took leases and purchased land at the beginning of the century. Despite their relative newness, I firmly believe that their barrel matured Rolle, Li Vecce, is one of, if not the, finest whites of Provence as a whole.
Rolle/Vermentino is a variety capable of coping with sunshine, which makes it suitable for the climate here, but also very adaptable to fermentation and maturation in oak (here a mixture of barrel-ages). The wine that results is decidedly Burgundy-like with aromas of honeysuckle, ginger, tarte-tatin and pear. It’s full and rich in the mouth, but backed up by the zesty lime-pith and thyme freshness that characterises the grape. There’s a little vanilla and oatmeal from the oak, but it is very much the frame rather than the main attraction, which is the complex array of fruit, spice, mineral and herb flavours. Compelling, delicious, and very easy to drink. Santé!
More information about Bellet in this article I wrote, here.
*There might be no tomorrow.
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Well, I’m pleased to add my first contribution to this thread:
This was produced in Segovia by Bodegas de Frutos Marin – an unusual “field blend” of Albillo Mayor, Jerez, Huerta del Rey, and Verdejo. “Spontaneous fermentation” with indigenous yeasts over a period of 6 months while stored in oak.
Tastes like a new-school Lopez de Heredia white Rioja (one of my longtime faves). Gonna have to go back to my local bottle shop on the Lower East Side, NYC, and snap up some more. Fantastic.
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2006 Clos du Marquis (en demi)
This was actually Tuesday’s afternoon tipple, I forgot to post it. Opened and decanted for a couple of hours, then drunk while video chatting to a good friend, who had a Corbières going. Nice medium ruby colour. Classy nose, blackcurrant and cedar tannins, some red fruits, some fruit sweetness. On the palate mid-weight, nice cedar tannins again, good acidity, blackcurrant fruit palate with blackberry, nice fruit sweetness, nice cassis perfume stays. It’s slightly fruit-driven, good structure, it’s got a smooth mouth-feel, and the fruit is the presiding character, not in a bad way, it is well balanced and very enjoyable.
Indeed I can testify you want to keep drinking it, as part of my attempt to control my wine intake during lockdown I opened a half bottle, unfortunately Kell had opened a full bottle at the other end, so after a couple of hours of chatting I opened a second half, oops.
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Doing old-fashioned bangers and mash (with an onion and red wine gravy) tonight so I think that this should fit the bill
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Love the wines from Saint-Cosme, Thier Cote du Rhone is also super
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Clos du Marquis is a lovely wine.
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As served at my favourite bar in Sanlucar, also called Barbiana, although this is the first time I have tried the en rama version.
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Only one way to find out! Get some blue (sheep’s) cheese at the ready (by far the best accompaniment to very sweet wine). Sugar is a great preservative, so should be okay, but depends on too many variables to predict. Santé!
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Tonight’s wine to go with a shoulder of lamb. Very pleasant. great with the flavorful dish, lots of fruit still, smooth not too tannic, full bodied. Not a complex wine, a bit short on the finish. Great to accompany hearty food.
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Time to drink the good stuff like there’s no tomorrow* #16
Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant 1991
California. 13%
I have to be honest and say that I thought this wine - or at least this particular much-travelled bottle - might be a bit over by now, but in a glorious antidote to the earlier-this-week premox Burgundy, I am delightfully wrong. Not that I’d recommend keeping it for further decades or anything, but it is definitely still drinking just hoopily at 29 years old.
“Cigare Volant”? You may be thinking. “Flying Cigar”? Quoi-le-F?
In the 1950s, the people of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, near Avignon, in the Rhône Valley, thought very seriously, and with obvious absence of hubris or sense of their self-importance, that when (as opposed to ‘if’ one cannot help but imagine) the Earth was invaded by itinerant Aliens, it would be their vineyards which would be the obvious target. So - with complete success thus far it has to be acknowledged - they decided to make such impudence ‘interdit’.
Forget Area 51 and Agent Orange and think more Departement 84 and près d’Orange. And onto the statutes of this highly celebrated wine region slipped the most bizarre law in all of wine. Spacecraft are expressly forbidden from landing in the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, under threat of impoundment. Obviously the little green men are just as wary of French Bureaucracy as the rest of us are, and flying cigar/saucer free the vineyards (and planet) remain. As far as we know.
This charming, but with potential-for-amusement, story had been somewhat brushed under the carpet by the presumably rather embarrassed locals, but was uncovered by Californian winemaking supremo, Randall Grahm, one of the original “Rhône Rangers” (a group of people who believed that perhaps - just perhaps - California was more suited to the grape varieties that grew successfully in regions with the same climate as they had, as opposed to places whose wines Thomas Jefferson happened once to enjoy drinking. And you have to concede, they had a point). With a label featuring a depiction of a fictional spaceship being even more daring than any real one has so far (or maybe not), thus ‘Cigare Volant’ was born. A blend of Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah and Cinsault, mirroring that of a representative Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
And so it tasted, then, as now. My fear was that as none of these varieties is especially high in acidity, the wine might have lost its vibrancy by now. But the alcohol level of 13% is a testament to either a not-especially hot vintage, or a restraint in the harvest and winery which has kept the wine alive and fresh, even until today.
But it is rich and spicy, as it should be, with the liquorice and damson of Mourvèdre, the violets and pepper of Syrah and the lush baked plums, cooked strawberry, jam of Grenache and the savoury, meaty, varnishy patina of age. I drank it with a ‘parmentier de boeuf’ and enjoyed both enormously. And each more for having the other to play with. Delicious. May the force live long and prosper.
*There might be no tomorrow.
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