Champagne Billiot 2005

This was a champagne I had in a dinner at the beginning of the month. I had not known this champagne but a freind brought it along to dinner and introduce it to me. This winery, founded in 1937 in Ambonnay, only produces Grand Cru Champagne from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, varies the proportion of the two grapes according to the harvest conditions for its vintage wine. Their vintage cuvee is aged for a minimum of five years prior to release.

As for this wine, it was a nice golden yellow with a few streams of fine bubbles. The nose was fresh with a hint of pineapple as well as a touch of bamboo shoots (筍). There was a dominant acid prickle on entry which died down to reveal an acid slightly fruity palate, and the bubbles developing into a gentle mousse. It was all supported by a good acid backbone.

Dolce 2006

We had this Napa dessert wine at the Silver Oak 6-vintage dinner the other week. The Dolce Winery was founded in 1985 by the partners of Far Niente, and is the only North American winery dedicated to the production of a single late harvest dessert wine, and that is in the mold of Sauternes, being made from botrytised Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. The Dolce 2006 was an 80/20 mix of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc respectively which underwent between 3 and 20 weeks of fermentation. The wine is aged for 31 months in all new French barrels before blending.

The wine was a nice golden yellow, with a sweet luscious dried apricot nose. The palate was sweet with luscious pineapple notes, supported by a sweet acid dried apricot backbone. It is quite a good approximation to a good Sauternes, but with a price at the top of the first growth Sauternes, I think I will stick with the French originals.

Lost in translation

There was a post in the Hong Kong Wine Lovers FB group about Burgundy issuing an official list of translations for Burgundy Appellations in traditional Chinese (en usage a Hong Kong). Apart from Burgundy being transliterated from the French Bourgogne, someone noticed that the translated names are actually different to the ones in simplified Chinese for the mainland market. Now simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese should only differ in the shape of the characters, a bit like changing the font in a European language. Yet because Hong Konger speak Cantonese whilst Mainlanders speak Putonghau (or Mandarin), it is absolutely understandable that a name like Gevry-Chambertin will result in a different group of characters when the spoken dialects are also dissimilar.

To complicate matters, although the Taiwanese also speak Mandarin, there is often a different transliteration to that used on the Mainland, with the the potential for another traditional Chinese version for Taiwan!! This Chines translation / transliteration business is really getting seriously confusing, in wine just like in every other sphere of life. I once presented 6 different Chinese translations for the Intensive Care Unit, but still missed the one they used in Zhongshan!!

A fortified sweet Graciano (or Tintilla di Rota)

I got to the Gonzalez Byass booth right at the close and found this bottle there. They tell me that Tintilla de Rota is an indigenous grape and I could not resist a taste. There was another wine (a dry one this time) which also contains a little of the grape and that it would probably be available in Hong Kong later. However, on reaching home and looking up the grape, I encountered the assertion that Tintilla di Rota is nothing other another synonym for Graciano.

Like the writer of Fringe Wine, I like to get to the bottom of these things and I found his entry on the grape immensely useful. The results of his travails wa that Tintilla di Rota is genetically identical to Graciano, so this Vinexpo, I have tasted two different Graciano sweet wines - the other being a late harvest Tinta Miuda. As for the wine, it was a deep purple ruby with a sweet sl alcoholic berry fruity nose. It was sweet and fruity on the palate with a hint of wood, with a slightly woody sweet acid backbone for support.

Some expensive Palinda wines

A shop opened near the hospital, selling all sorts of groceries. There were some wines on the shelves, from this Chinese owned Margaret River group by the name of Palinda. The variety on display included the lesser wineries as well as some of their top offerings. Some of these get marked as some $2000+ in price.

Now Palinda has not been a name that I am familiar with, so I had to check to see if it has received strong approval by authorities well versed in Australian. Well, it is certainly not in the Langton Classification. Although I see some prizes awarded, I do wonder whether these all add up to the elevated sums demanded. I had tasted some of their older wines in a club wine fair last year and although they were quite nice ( as evidenced by my notes at the time), I am still wondering whether they can justify those $2000+ price for the most expensive wines there. There are certainly quite a few worthwhile clarets I can get for that type of money. However, this is not inconsistent with the sort of pricing I have seen with some mainland wine firms.

AS for me, I saw an interesting bottle (looking like a sweet offering) for a reasonable price and bought that for a try.

A 6-vintage Silver Oak dinner

A friend went to the Napa Valley a few years ago and visited the Silver Oak winery. She bought one of those collector's set with 6 vintages of Silver Oak Napa Cabernet Sauvignon (2000-2005) in a beautiful wooden collector's box. She offered to have it form the basis of one of my PWC wine dinners, and this we duly organized. It was a very enjoyable just this last weekend.

Apart from the vertical tasting of these six vintages, we had a Schramsberg Blanc de Noir 2009 as well as a Dolce 2006 to flank these wines. I had the impression that Silver Oak was bold, brash and oaky, but this tasting firmly corrected my misunderstanding of this wine. Although oak was quite evident in all six vintages (even including those in which there is some suspicion of cork taint), it was well integrated and non-obtrusive. There was always fruit and acid enough to balance it. This dinner certainly invites me to assess Silver Oak anew.

Terrantez 1795 from Vinhos Barbeitos

Looking back at my entries, I found that this wine (Terrantez 1795 I mean, but not necessarily from any specific producer) was first mentioned in my entry on Terrantez in 2011.Of course it was a remarkably pleasant surprise that I was able to taste it in the recent KCCWS Madeira dinner. The wine was a deep tea colour, with a slightly alcoholic (spirity) smoky nose with vine fruits. There was lively sweet acid fruit on the palate with an acid nutty backbone in support.

To put things into perspective, we can remember that the doctor poet John Keats as well as the American philanthropist Johns Hopkins were both born this year. The second Governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Francis Davis was also born this year. Beethoven published his first three piano sonatas in 1795 and Haydn composed his 103rd (Drum roll and 104th (London) symphonies. JS Bach's ninth son, JCF Bach died that year as did the famous English potter Josiah Wedgwood.

The pheasants of the Gaja label

Several mid range Piedmont wines from the Gaja range sport pheasants on their labels - the Dagromis Barolo, the Sito Moresco Nebbiolo Merlot Cabernet blend, the Alteni di Brassica Sauvignon Blanc and the Rossj-Bass Chardonnay. I seem to recall a Barbera once produced by Gaja many moons ago which also had the pheasants on the label, but this is a wine I have not seen for some time.

This has always intrigued me, but now that I had met a couple of these wines in a recent Gaja tasting, I decided to ask about these birds. These beautiful birds live around various of the vineyards from which the fruit for the above named wines originate. Sure enough, pheasant hunting remains an important activity in this area when they are not busy tending to their grapes. If I were to choose one of the three to pair with these birds at the dinner table, I would plumb for Sito Moresco.

Affordable Gaja Tasting

I went to this tasting of the mid range Gaja offerings the other day. Starting with their Vistamare white blend of Vermentino and Viognier. The next wine was their Ca'Marcanda Promis, a super Tuscan blend of international varietals. Sito Moresco which followed, brought the taster back to Piedmont, but with a blend of the traditional Nebbiolo with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Criss-crossing back to Tuscany, the next wine presented was the Brunello from Pieve di Santa Restituta. The last wine was also a traditional offering - their Dagromis Barolo. I liked the Brunello best of the lot - a slightly pale ruby, with a sweet berry fruit nose, the wine was smooth on the palate with sweet berry fruit giving way to a mouthwatering sour plum acidity, which lingers on to give sterling support and structure.

This blog anticipated Decanter again

This blog had posted about Chateau Hanson in Inner Mongolia last November last year, a good few months before an article on it appeared in Decanter last month. I have done it again with the Taylors 1863 Single Harvest Port launch, but I suppose I would have to admit that it was launched here in Hong Kong the day before the opening of Vinexpo Asia Pacific 2014, and that was some days before its London launch. Although Taylors talk of not wanting it to be all sucked into Hong Kong, I wonder about the accuracy of the remark. I was at the Pre-Launch Public Tasting and found empty seats there. Is this another case of rare wines being bought up as collectibles by wealthy Chinese businessmen, who like to show them off in their prized collection cabinets or are they really going to wine lovers who are actually going to taste and appreciate these ancient treasures?

Tio Pepe

Now Tio Pepe is a fino sherry that I have had many a times. When I saw it described as 5 anos on the menu of the Gonzalez Byass dinner, I was intrigued. Was this another variant? No, the fresh fino that one sees on the shelves has al;ready spent 5 years in solera, but under flor, so it remains fresh. The other revelation was that ice-cold is the proper temperature for fino, not white wine temperature.

Now my wife has this thing about some of the dry sherries smelling like bone setter's liniment (鐵打酒); that element seems stronger at warmer temperatures. With the Tio Pepe served ice cold as it should be, the nose was dry with a touch of salt as well as a touch of the fermented bean curd (腐乳). I was surpirsed to detect a hint of sweet fruit in its dry palate and was pleasantly surprised with the touch of lemon acidity. Shows why serving wine at the correct temperature matters so much!

Gonzalez Byass Wine Dinner

Now I have been familiar with the Gonzalez Byass Winery as a sherry producer, so when I found that they were holding a wine dinner at the close of Vinexpo Asia Pacific 2014, I registered to join. I was surprised to find a lot more than sherry on the wine list. The welcome drink was not Tio Pepe as one might expected, but a rose Cava, now a part of their varied portfolio. There was also a Verdejo (but not from Rueda) , A Rioja Gran Reserva, and one of those new style wine blending international and Spanish grapes. The meal ended appropriately with a sweet sherry - their Solera 1847. As for my favourite that evening, the Apostoles Palo Cortado VORS! The evening would have been perfect if the sweet sherry served was Matusalem Oloroso Dulce VORS!!

Taylor's Scion Port

I tasted this Port in the Taylor's 1863 pre-launch tasting a few weeks ago. Although the port is from a single harvest, it was not sold with the year specified because certain "irregularities" meant that it cannot be labeled with the year. The year concerned was 1855, the year of the Great Exhibition for which the Bordeaux Classification of the same year was made.

This wine was aged in a cool cellar in the upper Douro ( as opposed to the 1863 which was aged in the much hotter conditions of Oporto). The wine was a deep mahogany brown, with a complex savoury pickled swede (蔥棻)  nose sporting a slight hint of spirit. There was sweet acid vine fruit notes with smokiness and again a touch of spirit on the palate. The smoky acid  elements continued to provide sterling support as the backbone of this old wine, with the smoky notes persisting into a long finish. It is interesting that the spirity notes are still present in this wine over 150 years old, but as is noted in the tasting, this spirit also ages in its own special way within the port, although one might have thought 159 years was ample for full integration between the spirit and the rest of the wine.

A sweet Mourvedre from California

I tasted this wine at a Cline Wine Dinner in Lan Kwai Fong organized on the back of Vinexpo at the end of May. Now Mouvredre is commonly found in Rhone style blends including GSM blends all around the world, and although it is said that it is sometimes found in Australian port style wines, I have not personally tried that myself. This however is an unfortified late harvest dessert wine made from Mourvedre.

Made with selected fruit (which undergo natural raisining on the vine) from their Big Break vineyard, the must is left to ferment on its own without added yeast, which proceeds until stopped by a mixture of alcohol and sugar. This 2011 example was harvested at 33.6 Brix and ended up as a 14.5% alcohol wine with 7g/L total acidity and 88.4g/L residual sugar. The winw was a deep ruby with a  sweet jammy berry orangey nose. It was sweet berry and luscious on the palate, with an orangey acid backbone.

Irancy

I had earlier blogged that a certain Greater China Wine Book had set me a target of a new grape to try - Cesar from Burgundy. In that  entry I departed with "Time to check the importers", which I have to confess I never got aroubd to doing. Yet Simmonet-Fevre was exhibiting at the Vinexpo at the end of May and so I went and visited the, to try my luck.

They did not have the varietal Cesar there but did have Irancy which is made from 95% Pinot Noir and 5% Cesar. The Cesar gives more tannic structure to the wine. The Irancy was purple ruby in colour with a strawberry jammy nose. The sweet strawberry fruit continued onto the palate with the jammy notes much muted. There was an acid but mildly tannic backbone, finishing on mainly an acid note. I suppose 5% Cesar just gave enough tannic lift to the backbone to make it noticeable.

A fortnight of old wines

Sometimes things just happen a certain way. Following on the way a secondary theme of fortified wines (and a tertiary theme of old wines) at last year's Wine Fair, I ended up tasting 7 wines of 50 years or over in the fortnight starting 16th May. First there was the 20th Century Madeira tasting in which the surprise was the 1795 Terrantez donated by a friend, then there was the Taylor's pre-launch tasting of the 1863 single harvest port.

So in order of increasing age, I had tasted Taylor's 1964 Single Harvest Port, 1958 Bual, 1922 Bual and 1908 Bual Madeiras from d'Oliveira, the 1863 Taylor's Single Harvest Port, Taylor's Scion Port (from 1855) and the Barbeitos 1795 Terrantez Madeira. Quite an amazing collection of old wines!! Now I had tasted a number of other wines of similar longevity; wonder if there is enough to write a little book in appreciation of old wines?!

Dal Forno Romano Amarone Monte Lodoletta 2006

I had this wine yesterday in an enjoyable dinner with friends.Now Dal Forno Romano is one of the top producers fo Valpolicellas, Amarones and Reciotos and we all had high expectations of this wine. The passion and care which makes this a top Amarone is undeniable, but the different grapes used is also a reflection of this pursuit of quality. One of the three common grapes in Valpolicella - Molinara was abandoned and replaced by older varieties such as Croatina and Oseleta.


The wine was a deep purple ruby with a sweet pruney acid nose and whiffs of vanilla oak. The palate was sweet plummy fruity with wood notes and tannins, and the sweet fruitiness and mild acidity lingered on into the tannic backbone, right till the finish. It matched the slow cooked beef ribs perfectly!!

Sweet Graciano

Grapes are often known by many synonyms. Graciano is also known as Tinta Miuda in Portugal. Normally used for dry reds in Lisboa and Tejo, I nevertheless found a late harvest example from Quinta da Alorna at last week's Vinexpo. Picked late and with fermentation arrested bu the cold weather (and then presumably sterile filtered so that fermentation does not restart when warmed), the wine then spends 4 months in used French barrels before bottling.

The wine was a limpid runy with just a hint of lilac and had a sweet orangey berry nose. The palate was sweet with berry fruit, a little acid and surprisingly for a wine of 11% alcohol a hint of alcoholic heat. That heat persisted through the backbone of acid right to its finish.

Bual 1908

This was the oldest wine in the 20th Century Bual Madeira wine dinner that I had already blogged about (also here). This Madeira was aging in barrel for a full century until it was bottled in 2008 (presumably for sale). This is the usual way with Madeira although my 1863 was moved to a glass container at some point when it passed its half century and then bottled from this glass container.

The wine was deep mahogany in colour. The nose was smoky with plenty of vine fruits and acid. It was very smooth on thye palate, retaining the raisiny smoky character, but with additional citrussy acidity for accompaniment. The acid smoky elements persists to provide sterling support as the backbone.

Masi Osar 2005

I mentioned that I had tasted another of the Cantina Privata Boscaini wines when I blogged about the Mazzano Amarone last week. That was the Osar 2005 which I tasted in a PWC dinner in 2012 featuring unusual Italian grapes. Osar is made from 100% Oseleta, a rare indigenous red grape in Veneto related to Corvina and Rondinella which nearly went extinct. It was low yielding and thus fell out of favour at a time when the phylloxera blight was devastating vineyards all over Europe. Recent interest in indigenous grapes helped in its renaissance.

As for the wine, it was a deep ruby with a sweet fruity nose. The soft fruity palate had hints of dilution, but the mouth watering acidity which emerged mid-palate rendered good support with an astringent dose of drying tannins bringing up the rear as its finish.

Vinexpo Asia-Pacific 2014

This happened at the Convention Centre on Tuesday to Thursday of last week. As a trade only exhibition, I can only try and wangle or borrow an admission badge for entry, the latter of which I did. However, I had a busy week at work and was scheduled to be on call one day, so I only had two very short sessions after work to go around the exhibition - perhaps a total of 3 hours in all! Nevertheless I got to try the Burgundy grape Cesar, and thought I tasted another two new grapes, but Tintilla de Rota turned out to be Graciano, and the Muscat Oliver from Zurich was how the Swiss calls Irsai Oliver from Hungary.

I also went to 3 wine dinners and another tasting last week. The latter was the Taylors tasting of old ports, already previously mentioned. The last wine dinner also featured fortified wines - 3 sherries from the Gonzalez Byass portfolio, which now includes table wines and even Cava.