A nice spring evening and some white wines

Today was a wonderful day here in Belgium and temperatures easily reached more than 23 degrees which caused also the evening to be quite warm.

After dinner (Mc Donalds with the kids, thus no wine involved), we decided to sit in the garden some more and open up a bottle of white wine.
We chose bottle of Castelo de Medina Verdejo, which is an excellent white wine from the Spanish Rueda DO. This is a wine with a lot of body and the necessary sours to support it, not as alcohol driven as some other Spanish wines (only 12.5 degrees alcohol).

After sipping our glasses for a while we got a visit from my parents in law, although they do like white wine they are more fan of classical French Sauvignon Blanc wines like Sancerre and the likes ... back to the cellar to get a bottle of Sancerre.

Unfortunately this first bottle (a bottle from Delhaize we once received as part of a gift from I don't remember who) had turned bad and basically had no taste at all in it anymore.

Back to the cellar again, this time to emerge with the last bottle of Domaine du Salvard - Cheverny 2006, which is an excellent alternative (although it is a blend Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay) to sometimes a lot more expensive Sancerre wines.

At the end of the evening we finished these two bottles and felt quite happy to have spent such a wonderful evening in the garden.

Rose wine is NOT a blend of white and red wine

There is a lot of fuss currently in the European wineworld for plans that the European Commision has to allow rose wine to be made by blending/mixing white and red wine in stead of the traditional way of making roses that simply uses a short maceration time to achieve the rose result.

There is a petition (that I signed as well) that tries to prevent this from happening. We'll see if it will help, but it is sure worth a try.

It is interesting to look at the background of this proposal. The EC uses the fact that the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (O.I.V) already allows for blending of red and white wines to create rose and that this practice is use alot in newer wine countries.

As the process of blending is easier than making a real rose, the result is a cheaper wine and European roses cannot compete anymore. This in itself would be a more or less noble goal ...

But according to some comments that I heared on the Belgian radio there is in fact a huge overproduction of (low quality) wines in the EC and currently all this overproduction is distilled into industrial alcohol ... subsidized by the EC ...

The reasoning of the reported was that allowing blending on red and white to create cheap rose would lessen the overproduction (as more is sold) and thus cost the EC less in subsidies.

I don't know what to believe in this matter, but as usual there will be some truth in either point of view.

A taste of Portugal

A few weeks ago we bought a few bottles of Portugese red wine at the salesweekend of ArteVino. 

I am talking about Vinha da Carrica Reserva  from the Douro Superior region made by the VDS (Vinhos Douro Superior) Vinhos winemaker.

It it made of local grapes the Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franc and Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo) which are 3 out of the top-6 of 48 allowed grapes to make Port.

The wine itself does not really taste like Port, more somewhat Bordeaux-like with its heavy aromas of plum and blackberry.

Anyway, it is another nice example of how Portugese wines don't have to fall behind in the brave new wine world in which we live in these days.

Monte Lindo Malbec/Merlot

On saturday I went to Mondovino to buy one of their promotion wines (MoDa, more on that later) and to prepare for a wine-tasting session on Chili and Argentina that I will be hosting in my company's wine club somewhere in june (more on all that later as well probably).

I knew already that I absolutely want to let people taste the excellent Trapiche Broquel Malbec (slow link) that we have enjoyed already numerous times since a few years. The guy in the shop also recommended a cheaper, probably more accessible for people that aren't big fans of wood-matured wine that I could try. The Alta Vista Finca Monte Lindo Malbec/Merlot blend (the Alta Vista bodega doesn't show the wine on their website, strange).

As it was for the better cause of learning my colleagues to enjoy the greatness of Argentinian wine I decided to buy two bottles and give it a go, even without tasting, which is not something I typically adventure anymore these days.

Anyhow  my wife and I opened the bottle on Sunday evening to enjoy it with a fresh bowl of Chile con Carne and although we initially thought it was a bit of a dissapointment (lightly coloured, lots of alcohol in the aroma, etc.) the bottle didn't survive the evening ...

Conclusion: I do think this is indeed a good wine for its price (about 7€)  to be drank with all kinds of food by all kinds of people.

I will keep you informed about what the colleagues think of it.

Le Nez du Vin

Apparently Le Nez du Vin has released new aromakits last april. I do know that these things exists, but I had no clue about how extensive these collections are. The biggest single collection has 54 different aromas, but even that does not include a few specific smells that are grouped in additional kits.

They even have a collection of 12 (twelve) different kinds of oak casks that would allows you to identify in which oak (French, American, etc.) the wine you are tasting has matured.

I am personally far from able to do so as my nose seems to need quite some time to remember all the aromas that wine can have, but I sure would like to get such a larger or specific aromakit as a present :-)

A multilingual wine tasting method

Today I bumped into the Wine & Spirit Education Trust which is an originally UK based organization that offers wine tasting educations all over the world, including in Belgium. I can imagine that their primary target for the education is rather professionals in stead of amateurs as they have different levels of education (from Foundation (level 1) to Honours (level 5)). But I might consider a level 2 course one of the coming years.

They have developed a tasting method they called WSET (tm) (wow, impressive) that allows people to systematically analyse a wine.

What especially caught my eye however is that their Level 2 (Intermediate) tasting sheet is freely available in multiple languages (e.g. English, Dutch, ...) which is very interesting for the next time we organize a wine tasting event where I work (there is almost always some people that doesn't speak Dutch natively).

The sheets basically contain the same elements as those that are used in the tastevin-wijncursus that I attend this year, although that one is in Dutch only..

What is it with these guru's ?

I've read with great intrest that there are actually more people than just myself that don't think that one man can determine whether a wine is good or excellent. 1WineDude mentions on his blogpost about some strange quotes from Robert Parker that basically put himself on a piedestal and implies that the rest of wine loving world doesn't know what they are talking about.

I sometimes notice the same behaviour in peoples behaviour in other areas where some people get the status of guru and basically thinks they are the sole source of truth. (think Bernard Madoff just to name one)

This of course doesn't mean that I am not influenced with the scores that are given by Mr. Parker, but I am not rich/snobish enough to just follow this guru and taste only wines that get >90 points.

TONG Magazine ?

When reading the news section on www.winetasting.be I bumped into the launch of a new glossy magazine about wine called Tong. The first issue is about Sauvignon Blanc all over the world which really seems to be an interesting read judging from the preview on the site.
Unfortunately the price of 28€ is really over the top I think. I rather buy a few nice bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and taste this myself.

Please leave a comment in case you did buy the magazine and tell us what you think of it.

Cellar cleanup part 1

On friday I started looking around in my cellar to find some room for the new wines that I bought the week before and bumped into some wines of which I was absolutely unsure if they were still drinkable or not.

One was a Cabarnet Sauvignon from Delhaize (the link points to the 2007 vintage), but I still had 1999 in the cellar. It actually did remarkably well considering its low price and old vintage. It wasn't exactly full bodied or anything but although the cork had clearly suffered a lot there was no oxidation and the wine hadn't evolved to tuile colour yet. In fact it only just started to loose its red colour it seemed.

Another one was untracable Merlot 2003 from Pays d'Oc, but this one I tasted only very briefly to notice that it had turned undrinkable due to oxidation. Colourwise this wine had about the same colour as the 1999 Cab Sav above which indicates that colour alone doesn't always allow to guess a vintage.

The last bottle we tried was a white Argentinian wine  also from Delhaize, but this time we had the 2002 vintage in stead of the 2008 that is currently on the shelves. I personally did not like it at all anymore as there was a very pronounced mineral taste that didn't fit me, but both my parents in law did enjoy it. 

Les goûts et les couleurs, ça ne se discute pas