Chateau le Sartre 2010

I don't know this wine from Pessac-Leognan, but then although I actually quite like both whites and reds from Graves, I have not tried that many different estates; I tend to stick with those well known ones which have given me much pleasure over the years. I came across this half bottle in a display of half bottles in the wine section of a Japanese department Store food hall close to the hospital and bought it for accompanying dinner a deux when one wants wine but not  much.

Established and well known in the 19th century, the flagging fortunes of the estate were turned around when it was rediscovered by the Perrins of Chateau Carbonnieux in the 1970s. Making both red and white wines of quality from good terroir between Fieuzal and Domaine de Chevalier, the wines garner good reviews from the press. I had the 2010 red the other day with steak and it went down a treat, with good fruity nose and palate well supported by and acid backbone spice with a sprinkle of tannins.

La Lus Albarossa

This was a wine I met at the Castello Banfi tasting earlier this month. I thought I had tasted it, but I might have mixed it up with Albarolla, which is of course different. Albarossa is a cross between Barbera and Nebbiolo, but it seems that this Nebbiolo is not the grape we are familiar with. The grape goes into Barbaresco and Barolo is an Italian grape that may sometimes be called Nebbiolo di Dronero, but the Nebbiolo di Dronero that is the parent of Albarossa is actually a French grape called Chatus!

As for the wine, it was a deep ruby with a sweet acid berry nose. The sweet berry acid elements continued onto the palate joined by wood notes, which joined with acidity to form a sterling backbone for the wine.

Orange Wines

There was this article in Decanter about orange wines a couple of weeks ago. In the tradition of this blog, I've already covered some aspects of this topic at different times before, with the latest entry a couple of months ago about a French Chardonnay fermented in clay vessels. It seems that the Mtsvane (probably) and the Kisi (definitely) wines fermented in qveri are also orange wines. However, I have not "defined" orange wines as yet. Orange wines are wines made from traditional white wine grapes, given extended fruit and skins maceration (can be thought of as white wines made like reds). This method has a long history but the pursuit of fresh fruity whites meant the style had fallen out of favour, only to have a recent renaissance. The Decanter article also makes suggestions about producers to try, otherwise try and search out the ones I have blogged here.

Chateau Fourcas Borie

Now I have come across wines from Listrac with Fourcas in their name, notably Chateau Fourcas-Hosten. One of my first posts about that estate was in an interesting match we had with its millenial vintage with crayfish bisque. I had heard of (but probably not tasted) Fourcas Dupre, but this latter Fourcas Borie was certainly new to me. I had just bought a bottle to try with some short ribs of beef last weekend. Now it is often the case the chateaux sharing part of their name, originally form a larger estate which was subsequently divided and then maybe the derivative etstate then undergoing further change.

This is not always the case as we can see with Cos d'Estournel and Cos Labory. This seems also to be the case with the Fourcas estates in Listrac, although it was only mentioned in the Website of Fourcas Dupre. There was an area in the Medoc caloled the Fourcas plateau in the late 18th century and various people grew wine there, of which the Fourcas Hosten and Fourcas Dupre estates were well known as top wines from Listrac by 1876. As for Fourcas Borie (which was previously known as Fourcas-Dumont), it was formed by combining the Clos du Fourcas and the Moulin de Bourg (the second wine goes under this name or Hautegrave-tris) estates. Now part of the portfolio of Bruno Borie of Ducru-Beaucaillou, the wine is garnering good response from the wine press.

Vin Aigre

I was at a celebration dinner the other day at one of those private kitchens with a large group of people and we were offered a newly uncorked bottle of the house red, which was some Vin de Pays or equivalent from Pay d'Oc. No one was offered any wine to try (to see if there were any faults) and I presume their nose was not particularly keen. When I started tasting my wine, I thought there was a whiff of vinegary acidity there and I wonder if my proximity to the kitchen and the salad bowl was somewhat interfering with my nasal evaluation of the wine. Or perhaps there was something wrong with the glass (which occasionally happens). The vinegary whiff persisted despite changing glass. I asked for the neighbour's glass and took a sniff. Still something suspicious!

To find out the truth, I hesitantly* took a sip, which confirmed that the wine had indeed oxidised somewhat and became vinegar. They opened another bottle and poured some (far too much for purpose) into a third new glass. That was alright and the spoilt glasses were changed.


NB. Vinegar comes form the French Vin Aigre (as in the title), ie sour wine


*I hesitated in allowing the presumed faulty wine to touch my palate because although that would confirm the fault, it could also ruin the palate for the day.

The 2010 Brunellos from Banfi

The "poster" on the Web for the Castello Banfi tasting championed the 2010 Brunellos, so I was surprised to see a whole gamut of wines from Tuscany, Piedmont and beyond the other day. However, I was able to taste two stars from that privileged vintage, both single vineyard offerings - Poggio alle Mura and Poggio all'Oro. I think I have a bottle of the 1997 vitage of the former somewhere in my collection, bought from Macau if my memory serves me right. I am sure I had tasted the latter at the Tre Bicchieri tasting in 2011. (Maybe my bottle was the latter and not the former, according to the Tre Bicchieri entry)

Back to the star Brunellos, the Poggio Alle Mura was a nice ruby colour with vanilla wood notes giving way to a mildly fruity nose. Sweet fruit was followed by acid and tannins on the palate, leaving an acid tannic backbone. The Poggio all'Oro was lighter in colour, a plaer ruby, with a berry meaty nose accompnaied by acid.The palate was sweet and fruity, and like the other wine had good support from an acid tannic backbone.

Ceretto's Barbera Piana

We went to a hotel restaurant for our anniversary dinner and took the tasting menu. We did not take the wine package as that was the same as what they had offered on a previous visit. Looking through the wine list and referencing it to the menu, I picked this wine for the evening.

Now Ceretto is a producer that I had already met, though I am unsure how many wines I had tried of theirs. Their flagship wines are well known and so I decided for this Barbera to accompany us for the meal. Made with fruit from vines planted in 1965, this Barbera d'Alba was fermented and aged in steel (for 6 months). As for this 2011 wine, it was ruby red, with a berry slightly sweet then acid nose. The sweet acid combination carried through to the palate with a lessening of the fruit in the mouth, well supported by an acid backbone.

A Castello Banfi tasting

I went to a tasting of wines from Castello Banfi yesterday. Initially I thought it was a tasting of the 2010 reds (which I of course tasted) but the tasting covered many more wines in the Banfi range than that. Four sparklers (of which two are sweet), some half a dozen whites and maybe a dozen reds (including 2 single vineyard Brunellos from 2010) were presented.I was more used to thinking of Banfi as a Tuscan concern, but know that they have vineyards in Piedmont, A Venezia Pinot Grigio showed that they have diversified further afield. The one wine I did not expect to see, amongst the Chiantis, Brunellos, Super-Tuscans was a varietal Albarossa. I am sure I had tasted this before, but definitely not as a varietal. This needs another entry to present.

Matching Osso Buco

We had osso buco (cooked my way, which de-emphasizes the gremolata) over the weekend, and I thought long and hard about wine pairing. One route to go down is to look at the wines of the locality from which the dish came, but Oltrepo Pavese and other wines from Milan and its environs are not the easiest to come by. I ended up getting a Chianti and it was alright on the night.

But what might the experts recommend? Hugh Johnson (2013) did not ask readers to search out Milanese wines; he thought Dolcetto and Pinot Noir from Northern Italy might work well, or try for Soave and Lugana. Matthew Jukes went for Australian, New Zealand and Oregon Pinot Noirs and full bodied Chardonnays. The Wine Spectator forum said Amarone was the classic (but not from the locality of the dish) and other suggestions include Chateauneuf as well as Cote-Rotie.

Revisiting the Don PX 1962

I had tasted and blogged about this wine before. Indeed I showed them the entry at the tasting. However this wine gave a completely different impression. The colour was the same dark mahogany, but instead of the smoky nose with plenty of dried vine fruits, there was less smoke but a prominent soya sauce savoury element on the nose. This savoury soya sauce note carried over to the palate as well, accompanied by a sweetness which though initially a touch muted increases with an increasing acidity from entry to swallowing. The pruney notes from the last tasting was nowhere in evidence. The backbone was acid with a touch of astringency, whereas the last time there were more raisin notes.

A red Grolleau from Leflaive

Grolleau is a grape I had blogged about before, in the context of being a part of the cepage of Rose d'Anjou. The fact that an obscure wine like this can be found on the shelves of one of the big two supermarket chains here in Hong Kong says as much about the wine buyers as the local wine drinking populace. This time it is a proper red wine made from this obscure Loire grape that has caught my attention as much as its maker (Anne Claude Leflaive, who had passed away recently). Anne Claude Leflaive has been better known for being at the helm of Domaine Leflaive, but she had acquired Clau de Nell in the Loire in May 2008 (together with Christian Jacques). There are 2 ha of Grolleau vines of between 60-90 years of age, grown biodynamically for this wine (full Demeter certification). A respectful handling of the fruit and the subsequent wine in the cellars made me want to buy and try a bottle.

Old vs New World again

I saw this article in the Wine Times HK about Old and New World wines. It is a topic which has got many wine lovers into passionate argument, but in fact this is not as interesting way of looking at thinks as international vs indigenous grapes.I had certainly had a post on this latter topic before (in the Italian context).

Back to Old and New world wines; the problem is this - if this is an Old World country which is not known for making grape wines, what would you classify it as? If one takes India, then wine making is a recent enterprise and the style is certainly more New World than established, so why not New World? On the other hand, China has been making wine certainly for a long time and the more important point is that the people appreciated it and wrote poetry praising it. So the bit about producing drinkable wine in the aforesaid article was rather condescending. At least the author recognized South Africa for its great wines of the past (I blogged about Constantia in the third month of this blog). Finally I must disagree with the sentiments of the last paragraph. Of course there is no reason to accept faulty wines (which is what I see as being labelled "old world"), but the Parkerisation of wines and chase of fruit alcohol bombs threaten to wipe the character or typicity of wines from different places off the face of the earth - that's not a good thing anytime. That's why I find typicity, indigenous grapes and terroir much more interesting.

A medium sweet Georgian wine in pottery vessel

We got given a bottle of this wine by a friend the other day, a bottle of Georgian wine in clay vessel. This is similar to the sort of wines I blogged about earlier. This turns out to be a semisweet red wine made from four different indigenous grapes - Saperavi, Aleksandrouli, Mujuretuli and Ojaleshi. I am sure I had tasted the first two and probably the third, but the last seem rather foreign to me. VIVC tells me there are 3 black grapes with Ojaleshi in its name, and some other source on the Internet tells me that Ojaleshi is also a place. Now untangling that is going to be fun! The wine is supposed to have 30-50 g/l residual sugar, which places it in the medium sweet category. I suppose I will find out about the rest when I open the bottle and taste it.

Older wines 2

To continue from the other blog on older wines, the real question becomes; how old is old? One can always say that a half century wine is definitely old, and no one can argue. But how many people will have the chance to taste such a wine, and how many wines of that age are actually drinkable? If you take the advice from Hugh Johnson's 2005 Pocket Wine Book, then anything over half that age (25yrs) is definitely speculative. (He actually said that wines older than 1982 are speculative in 2006). The gentle demise of a 65 yr old wine rather confirms his assertion.

Well, I also suppose you have to take into account the colour as well. Whites are generally not supposed to last as long, especially dry whites, so maybe even a 20 year old white is old. (Of course some whites are designed to age (even dry ones) and those aged examples (such as this and this) are very much eye openers. Reds fare better and although the 1966 Haut-Brion was disappointing compared to the Margaux (at the Two Century Dinner), it actually was still a respectable drink. As for fortified wines, that's another story altogether.

Don PX 1946

This was the wine mentioned in the entry about the Don PX 1962, which I felt was out of my budget. I finally got to try this 69 year old wine at a recent tasting. One has certain expectations of a 100-point Parker rated wine, but the initial impression on nosing quite threw me off balance. The problem was a dominating note of fresh lemongrass, which rather obscured the raisiny notes underneath. It was very smooth, rich and viscous on entry, followed by the self same lemongrass notes accompanied by acid. The rich viscosity carried through to a slightly acid backbone with a slight hint of grape skin astringency. I might have bought a half bottle if that was available, but it certainly expanded the limits of my knowledge of what a Parker 100-point wine can be.