Grand Cru disappointment

I had this wine the other day with Ham hocks and cabbage , my own attempt at a simplified choucroute garnie alsacienne. I had known of the Grand Cru Goldert for some time, but never tried any of its wines. The Grand Crus of Alsace are designated vineyards from the best locations, currently totaling 51 sites, with strict rules about yields, cepage, etc. The system is not without controversy and certain growers do not participate.

With such requirements comes expectation. Although the above wine was dry with good citrus fruit and acid, there was little more in terms of complexity. This was more like my impression of New World Riesling, rather than the offerings from Alsace that I had been used to. Hence my disappointment at this wine.

Chenet's Beaujolais Nouveau

The Beaujolais Nouveau has arrived some time ago. Yet when I saw this on the supermarket shelves the other day, it still somewhat took me by surprise. That supermarket chain has been stocking many different varieties of wines from JP Chenet, but most of them seem to come from Languedoc of that area, so it was unsettling to see that they had foraged into Burgundy. Besides, most of the Beaujolais one sees in Hong Kong are from George Duboeuf or Burgundy producers. In any case Duboeuf owns some 10% of Beaujolais vineyards. Looking up Chenet's website, I see that they have been selling Beaujolais Nouveau for some years now. As for me, I am not a big fan of Beaujolais Nouveau, but should I want to get a bottle, I'll stick to the traditional vendors, rather than a merchant that I associate with South West France.

Late night drinking with friends

We went for late supper the other day with friends and this was the wine line-up that night. I had already blogged about the Ma Maison Pinot Noir before, and its appearance in the line-up was purely for the novelty value of its Hong Kong connection. Then again, it is not a bad New Zealand Pinot Noir and is fine to go with Chinese food generally.

The Gruaud-Larose second wine was next for drinking and it was nice with a flowery fruity nose and a pruney acid palate spiced with a touch of wood. I suppose the Leeuwin Estate Art Series Cabernet would have shown better if it went before the claret. As it was, although there was fruit, acid and wood ere evident in both nose and palate in a fairly balanced structure, it failed to shine after the Sarget, which was a pity for a Langton classified wine.

Wines from exotic grapes at M&S

I am in London at present and went to one of the big M&S stores in London a few days ago and had a walk around the wine section. Just as I expected there were some very interesting wines on the shelves. I saw some Georgian wines which had not made it to their Hong Kong branches, and I also saw these. I had no recall if I had either of these before (at the wine fair which I will again miss this year as I will be out of town then). The two bottles on the left (of consecutive vintages) are from Crete and are made from the local grape called Dafni. The other one is a Croatian wine made from a grape called Grasevina. I bought a bottle of each. I suppose I will find the opportunity to drink them whilst here, otherwise, they can always be tasted back home.

Chasselas the table grape

I had blogged about wines made from the Chasselas grape before, both Swiss and German ones, yet even though I know that it is a table grape in some parts of Europe, I had never met it in this guise before. I saw this walking around the fruit section of a large department store in London and so I took a snap of it. The price being a tad expensive, we did not buy any to try, apart from the fact that we were just going round the store and nowhere near going home at the time. It looked delicious though, maybe another time.