Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg

The name on bottle is the vineyard name, but the vineyard is not really a traditional Ortsteil, but an Erste Lage vineyard in the village of Schlossbockelheim, situated on the north bank of the river Nahe, west of Niederhausen (it seems that GG wines only show vineyard names in the front). There is another Erste Lage vineyard in the village, Kupfergrube, which lies immediately to its east. The south facing aspect together with the easily warmed volcanic soils means long maturation times for the grapes, which in the case of the above wine come from old vines. This results in nervous racy wines with good minerality and a profound depth of character.

A not-so-successful wine dinner

The doctors' association at my hospital had a Spring Dinner last week and we held it at the Central premises of the Hong Kong Medical Association. I had tried to match a few dishes with wines and also brought a couple more as general all-purpose wines for the banquet style meal. With local cuisine, when we eat at home or informally at restaurants, the dishes are all brought to the table to be eaten concurrently with each other. In a banquet style meal, the dishes are served one after another. This contrast is much like the service a la francaise (exemplified by an overloaded table with wonderful set pieces of the time of Louis XIV) as opposed to service a la russe (a series of dishes served in succession, like Western meals nowadays).

That night, despite a reasonable experience with wine service one week previous, the waiters were not very good at ensuring the right bottles were opened in good time. The kitchen was worse, with a cluster of dishes arriving on the table in quick succession, before the previous dishes were consumed so that up to four separate courses were present at the same time. That of course meant that people had no time to try pairing the wines with the dishes. The lesson learnt is, not only have you got to instruct the waiters with the order of the wines; you also have to communicate with the kitchen to make sure that the next dish would not be ready before the last dish had been consumed.

Apremont de Savoie

This is Apremont de Savoie, a cru of Vin de Savoie, which I tasted at last year's Wine and Dine Festival. Made mainly from the local Jacquere grape, the balance can be made from a number of other varieties including Aligote, Altesse, Chardonnay and Marsanne. This example was a pale straw, with a crisp appley nose. The entry of the palate was off dry with a continuation of the crisp appley notes. An acid backbone gives ample support.

As for Jacquere, it is a high yielding grape from Savoie, giving acid wines with herbaceous aromas and notes of green apples and pears. Apart from Apremont, it is also found in some Bugey wines.

Chene Bleu

Chene Bleu is a range of wines produced by Domaine de La Verriere in Southern Rhone. The property dates back to the ninth century when there was a priory on the site, and the name of the estate changed to La Verriere, when Aliot de Montvin established a glass-blowing workshop there in 1427. Due to inheritance disputes, the property was abandoned and the house became derelict when it was purchased by the present owners in the mid 1990s. The house was rebuilt and the vineyards were also subjected to careful restoration.

The new owners set about making the best wine they could from the vines and the vineyards. Tended by biodynamic principles and building a state of the art winery, the estate produced their first vintage in 2006. Although the property was at the confluence of a 4 appellations just outside Gigondas, the estate felt the AOC system would place unacceptable restrictions on their pursuit of producing the best wine possible, so they opted to produce Vin de Pays de Vaucluse. As for Chene Bleu, it was named after a magnificent oak that used to tower over the vineyard and priory buildings. It suffered in the drought of 2005 and a tree sculptor painted it with the blue Bordeaux mixture.

Meeting Chateau Haut-Marbuzet

My first encounter with this wine was an auspicious one (for the wine) - it was voted the best wine of the night in an early KCCWS wine dinner at the Regal Kowloon Hotel, in which we had a blind tasting of a whole range of 1994 clarets. One of the wines it beat was the Mouton-Rothschild which I later found showed such a wide bottle variation that I previously thought impossible in first growths. That 1994 Haut-Marbuzet was quite tannic at the time (and would benefit from a few more years of waiting) but the fruit, acid and other elements were evident enough despite the tannins to win our hearts.

Humagne Blanche

This is a bottle of varietal Humagne Blanche from Valais in Switzerland. Despite the similarity in name, it is not related to Humagne Rouge (Prime Name - Cornalin d'Aoste). A Swiss wine grape predominantly grown in the Valais, it is an old variety thought to be brought to Switzerland by the Romans. Its wine is full bodied with an appealing minerality. It was reputed to be health giving (earning the name of Krankenwein - wine for patients) and its fortifying properties also recommended itself to women after childhood (hence Kinderbettenwein - cradle wine, but intended for the mother rather than for baby). As for the above example which I tasted at last year's Wine and Dine Festival, it was a pale straw with a crisp slightly fruity nose. The slightly sweet fruitiness continues on the palate supported by an acid backbone.

Mouton 2008

The label for the 2008 vintage of Chateau Mouton Rothschild was painted by Xu Lei ( 徐累), the second ever Chinese artist to be given the Mouton label commission (the first being Gu Gan (古干) in 1996). Born in Nantung and graduating from the Nanjing's Art University, Xu Lei is the artistic director of Beijing's Today Art Museum and a fellow of the Art Academy of China. Keeping to his habit of a subdued blue palette with animals, the 2008 Mouton label features a ram (mouton means sheep) astride coral reef between two halves of a globe with hanging grapes.