Nyetimber sparkling wine from Sussex

This is the top sparkling wine from England and is what put English wines on the international map. Although it is the avant-garde for the English wine industry, the founders were strangely a pair of American Anglophiles, who had actually tried to see if they can find a place to produce a sparkling wine to rival champagne outside France. So good was their result that in a blind tasting, it was alleged that although the tasters could tell it was not champagne, they could not decide which region of France this superior bubbly came from. Red faces for all when it was found to be from that little corner of England called Sussex!! It then went on to win many awards including Champion of worldwide Sparkling Wines at the Bollicine del Mondo 2009 for the 2003 Classic Cuvee.

Nyetimber has basically started with two products, a Classic Cuvee, from the normal champagne cepage and a Blanc de Blanc from Chardonnay. Here in Hong Kong, Watsons had stocked it at around $400+ and not surprisingly that venture proved short lived. Now with the elimination of the hefty wine tax, it is still selling at around $300+ at Berry's and it would be a difficult sell for non-British to buy, given that some cheap NV champagnes can be had for quite a few dollars less. However, it is a fine wine and is aged longer than most ordinary NV and basic vintage champagnes at 5 years. It has just released a rose, but whether that can topple other English wineries who have already established themselves in this sector remains to be seen.

First Growths 1997

This was a special wine dinner organized by Peter's Wine Circle in 2004. We tasted this set of Bordeaux first growths that evening, so as to make a comparison between them. This was occasioned by the great fortune of being able to obtaining the above set at a reasonable price. After a thorough reading of various books so as to arrange the wines in ascending order of enjoyment, it was decided to taste the two Rothschilds first - Lafite, followed by Mouton, followed by Margaux. It was undecided whether we should have Latour or Haut-Brion next. After having a sniff at the corks and the bottles, the order became Latour with Haut-Brion bringing up the rearguard (ie right to left in the photo). Needless to say, that evening was immensely enjoyable. Dessert was accompanied by a Guiraud of the same vintage.

My limited experience of first growth clarets would also rank them fairly similarly. The Rothschilds are the most variable. Lafite can be sublime in certain years, but really disappointing in others. I had bad experiences with immense bottle variation within two cases of the same Mouton 1994. Margaux is generally quite nice. Latour and Haut-Brion are fairly consistent in their excellence, with one disappointment each in my limited experience. The 1997 Latour (ie this one) was not at good as I expected, but still 4 out of 5. The 1966 Haut-Brion (tasted at the Two Centuries Dinner, the subject of a future blog) was initially very fine and beat the Margaux 1966 hands down. However, it failed to develop much after this. The Margaux probably suffered from some bottle stink, which marred first impressions. It then blossomed in the glass and overtook Haut-Brion, turning into a most memorable wine.

Salon

This is Salon, one of those few champagnes that goes completely against the grain of what everyone else does in that region. Champagne is a blended wine par excellence, across different villages, with a mix of the three grapes, and usually sold as a non-vintage wine, across the years. Salon, on the other hand, is single grape (Chardonnay), single village (Le Mesnil sur Oger) and only available as vintage wines. Salon grew famous in the 1920s and 1930s as the house champagne of the famous Paris restaurant Maxim's. Sure, it's not the only champagne that's so. The others include Bollinger Vieille Vigne Francais, and the two single vineyard wines from Krug - Clos de Mesnil and Clos d'Ambonnay. It's in fine company indeed.

Germany - home of grape crossings?

I took this picture at the duty free shop at Bali International Airport. These three offerings from Louis Guntrum are all Pradikatswein made from German grape crossings of the early 20th century. On the left we have a Huxelrebe Spatlese, a Bacchus Kabinett in the middle and an Ortega Auslese on the right. I just noticed that the Ortega is from a Doktor vineyard, in Dexheim rather than Bernkastel. It is not visible at the resolution of the blog, but that Doktor wine is also different in that it is a 2009 wine bearing an APNr with 09 as its last 2 digits. That means it was officially tested in 2009, quite a feat for an auslese of the 2009 vintage!

Back to the grapes! Huxelrebe was created by Dr Scheu in 1927 and is a high yeilding early ripening grape. It can reach Auslese levels easily and with controlled yields can high quality sweet wines with muscat-like aromas. Bacchus is a Sylvaner x Riesling cross interbred with Muller-Thurgau created in 1933. It is an early ripening grape with high must weights, but tends to low acidity. The wines have exuberant flavours if allowed to ripen fully, but become more like Sauvignon Blanc in style in England where the cooler climate results in lower yeilds with higher acidity. Ortega was created in 1948 from crossing Muller-Thurgau and Siegerrebe and is also used as a table grape. It ripens early with higher must weights and can give wines with peach and Muscat aromas. All three are also grown in England.

Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz

I thought I took a picture of the Graveyard vineyard when I visited the Hunter Valley in 2005, but I can't seem to locate it, so the picture of a bottle of the product will have to do in its stead. This is the top Hunter Valley Shiraz, being promoted from Outstanding to Exceptional (top tier) in the latest Langton's classification.

First planted in 1968, the vineyard got its name from the plans of the town of Pokolbin of 1882 as the plot was earmarked as the Cemetery Block. That never came to pass and the plot was bought by Brokenwood initially to plant Cabernet Sauvignon (some old bottles are around) but the vineyard really achieved its full potential and international fame as the exponent of Hunter Valley Shiraz.

 

My problem with Ch Lynch Bages

Chateau Lynch Bages is a fifth growth claret with a popular following. Its current performance is well above the average in the lower two growths and some would gladly consider the wine a second growth. My wife and I have a big problem with it. We enjoy it very much when we know that we're drinking the wine, but when it comes to blind tasting, we consistently put it in the last three places of our preference (usually between 6 to12 wines tasted).

Sometimes blind tasting is not as objective and fair as one might think. When you know the wine, you can open the bottle for it to breathe its optimum time for maximum enjoyment. Yet in blind tasting, all bottles are opened at more or less the same time, so that by the time it is tasted, some wines would have breathed optimally, but there would be others that would be under- or over- breathed.

Recently, I did rate Lynch Bages in my top three; was it that the wine was optimally breathed, or have my tastebuds resolved my differences with this chateau?

The ultimate grape juice!

This is the most expensive grape juice I have ever bought - at around $10 per ml! This is a bottle of Tokaji Eszensia from Stanza, and it is not vintage dated. I bought it in 2004 and at the time, I think there was information on the Internet, which gave the vintage as 1996. In the previous entry about Eszensia, I wrote that these celestial elixirs are very low in alcohol, so low that the winemakers protested they could not consistently exceed a proposed minimum of 5% alcohol. Peter Vinding-Diers, who made this offering, took the low alcohol idea to its ultimate conclusion and released this non-alcoholic version in 100 ml bottles with its own little light blue cardboard carton.