Intermezzo - a nice red Burgundy

Yesterday evening we had a very fine dinner in restaurant het pomphuis, which has a very extensive wine list with wines from all over the world ranging from relatively cheap bottles at 25€ upto a bottle of 1995 millésime (degorged in 2006) champagne
Moët et Chandon for the price of 590€ a bottle ...

Anyway, we didn't have any wine during dinner as we had decided upfront that we would open a really good bottle from our own cellar after dinner. We came home and decided to open up a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet from the Cote de Beaune region in Burgundy.
It was the 2007 vintage bottled by Henri de Villamont.

I don't normally drink Burgundy wines a lot as they are often too expensive for what they really are, but I bought this bottle a while ago during a tasting at Wijnen Van Durme in april. It was still a hefty >20Euro price, but we do think it was worth it ...

After opening the bottle the first thing we notices was the exceptional intense colour that was already really red without hints of purple which is quite strange for a 2007 vintage I though. Next to that the aroma was amazingly fresh, containing lots of red berries and a slight hint of vanilla and other spices.
Taste wise it was very soft, with maybe a tad too much sour.

Back from rose country ...

Hello there, I just returned from two weeks of very relaxing holiday in the country of the Rose ... the French VAR region, in the middle of the Cote de Provence AOC where we stayed for two week in a wonderful house with pool that we rented.

Of course we drank a lot wines (also white and red) and I will surely blog about some of the highlights in the coming days and weeks. Quantity wise we probably had most of the dirt cheap rose en vrac that we buy at the local Les Caves Du Commandeur store in Salernes.
This rose en vrac only costs about 1.4€ (per liter), but as there are no packaging costs (bring your own container ...) it can compete with roses that maybe cost 4€ (per 0,75l) in the supermarket.

Egri Bikavér (bull's blood wine)

My mother went to Hungary, and guess what she brought me as a present ... some Hungarian wine: two bottles of 2006 Egri Bikavér from Ostorosbor producer. I just received them thus did not open them yet, but you can expect a small note on the taste as soon as I tried it.

This wine region has its own AOC (or DHC, Districtus Hungaricus Controllatus, as they call it locally) that is quite liberal though (at least 3 out of 10 grape varieties are allowed to be used).
This reminds me of Chateuneuf-du-pape that also allows (too?) many varieties to be blended to make the taste more or less predictable.

This particular bottle doesn't seem to be a cuvee of any sort (it was bought in the local supermarket of the place she visited), thus I don't know what to expect. It seems to be a rather unusual(for my limited view on wines that is) blend of Zweigelt, Cabernet and Kékfrankos (aka Blaufränkisch). This means it will actuallybe more like an Austrian wine with some French Cabernet thrown in for making is special.

It doesn't seem to have the more traditional Kadarka grape in it, but the Kékfrankos makes it a typical more modern Egri Bikavér that I will (hopefully :-)) enjoy when the time is right.

Thi

Kekfrankos aka Blaufrankisch