Les Clos Perdu Rose 2012

Although I had first met Corbieres way back in 1981, when it was only VDQS, all the Corbieres I ever met was red. I met my first Corbieres Rose the other day during this tasting at the neighbourhood organic wine shop. Looking it up, I found there are regulations also for white Corbieres too!

This example from Les Clos Perdu is made from 95% Mouvedre and 5% Cinsault, a cepage more often associated with Bandol Rose. The fruit is pressed on arrival to winery and cooled to 5 degC for settling and stabilisation. Fermentation is at 18 degC with a small proportion taking place in new oak, where it remains for 3 months for added complexity. Regular lees stirring is also done for this purpose. As for the wine, it was a pale rose in colour, with an off dry fruity nose. The palate was similarly off dry and fruity with with significant body, well supported by an acid backbone, Nice!

Champagne Besnard Chevalier et Filles 2005

A French doctor was going to a Manila conference via Hong Kong (a conference that I also attended) and our group arranged a dinner to meet up with some local doctors at dinner. This bottle is what he brought to dinner, a champagne from a small grower which he tasted and liked, and kept buying for his own consumption. Now that can only be something special. In fact I could not find anything on the Internet about the grower, except listings on the websites for buyers.

I understand from Dr Blin that it is a champagne made with the ordinary cepage. The wine was a nice golden yellow with good streams of fine bubbles. There was a fruity slightly pruney nose with hints of bamboo shoot. There was a good acid prickle on entry, dying down to a nice mousse, revealing sweet slight acid palate with fruity and nutty notes, well supported by a acid backbone.

Les Clos Perdus

This is a organic (tending towards biodynamic) gem of a winery in Corbieres which is the neighbourhood organic wine shop sells. Its website shows favourable reviews from Jancis Robinson, Decanter and Parker (no less) and having tasted a number of wines which I thought lifted my impressions of the Corbieres appellation, I thought it is time to explore this winery.

The name Les Clos Perdus means the lost (enclosed parcels of ) vineyards, and refers to the small parcels of old vines scattered on the hillsides around the locality. They are low yielding hence able to produce high quality fruit, but tend to be remote, unamenable to mechanization and thus unattractive to larger producer. This winery based in the village of Peyriac de Mer in the Languedoc, producing red whites and roses of the appellations Corbieres (3 red, 1 rose) and Vin de Pay de Cotes Catalan (2 whites and 2 reds).

Ch Pouget 2009

I tasted this wine at this year's Food Expo. It was one of, if not, the first first encounters with this Fourth Growth Margaux estate, of which I had recently blogged. It seems that the cepage has changed from the info on the website as this wine has a smattering of Petit Verdot added in. It was generally well received, with Wine Spectator rating of 93-96 and a Decanter rating of 17/20.

The wine was a lovely purple ruby in colour with a fruity nose (I was a bit impaired with the remnants of a cold that day). The sweet fruitiness continued onto the palate, which was then amply supported by an acid tannic backbone.

Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus

I had this wine at a dinner last night. The wine comes from a vineyard solely held by Bouchard Pere et Fils who acquired it in 1791 and has held it since. The name of the vineyard comes from an old story about the founder of the Carmelite monastery which owned the plot until the French Revolution. This nun predicted that although the then Queen of France was regarded as sterile, she would have a baby son, the future Louis XIV, the "Roy Soleil". At his birth, the Domestiques de la Famille du Saint Enfant Jesus which owned the vineyard renamed it Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus. The plot is a 9.9 acre section of the Beaune 1er Cru Greves climat and is one of those flagship 1er Crus of Beaune (having no Grands Crus) together with Drouhin’s Clos des Mouches and Jadot’s Clos des Ursules.

Kanaan Winery Riesling 2013

I mentioned this wine in a previous entry on a Riesling tasting in the organic wine shop. This Riesling is from a winery in Ningxia, which is apparently an up and coming region in China, but this will need another blog entry to explore. As for the Riesling I had tried, it was a pale lemon colour, with a slightly peachy nose with lots of lime notes. It was dry and citrussy on the palate with a sterling acid backbone. The nose suggested a dry Riesling of the Australian or New Zealand mould, though that did not translate to the palate. With a young winery (only 4 years) and young vines, this is a very good start and Kanaan's Riesling is certainly something to keep a close eye on (even though this is not a style of Riesling I prefer).

Another Japanese Kerner sweet wine

In my blog about Kerner, I mentioned about a botrytised Kerner from Hokkaido, which unfortunately have neither tasted nor blogged about. This is not that wine, but still a sweet Kerner from Hokkaido, this time from Grace Wine. I saw this wine in a branch of a Japanese wine retailer, at the same time as I spotted this Burgundian sweet wine, and I got a couple of bottles when I bought that wine for the doctors' association wine dinner. Looking up the wine on the winery's website, it seems that the overripe fruit for this medium sweet wine comes from Yoichi in Hokkaido, having been selected for concentration and minerality. It is then fermented and aged in stainless steel. I will certainly look forwards to tasting it.