Last week when visiting some friends they showed me their collection of 'special' wines that they kept for special occasions. One of the bottles was the "S de Siran 1998" which we drank that same evening.
The "S de Siran" is the 2nd wine of the Chateau Siran estate in the Margaux region of Bordeaux.
According to the website this 2nd wine is best enjoyed between 5 and 7 years after the vintage year, and indeed the wine was maybe a little bit over the top, but it was still highly enjoyable.
There was quite some sediment in the bottle, but luckily it stuck to the bottle and was not floating around in the wine.
Think wine is expensive in Sweden ?
Do you think wine is expensive in Sweden ? Think again ...
Last week we visited our family that lives near Göteborg for the next 2.5 years. When visiting the system bolaget in Mölnlycke we bought a bottle of 2008 Casillero del Diablo Carmenere which cost us 70 SEK. In Delhaize in Belgium this wine is 6.99€, which is 0,13€ more expensive at the time of checking :-)
About the wine: this is an excellent example of where a commericial wine from a big bodega in Chili, Concha y Toro in this case, can give very good quality for a very reasonable price. This was a full bodied wine with the necessary taninnes and enough sourness to be well balanced, which is quite an achievement considering the Carmenere grape and the fact that wine is only 1 year old (maybe two when considering the fact that Chili is in the other hemisphere)
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Last week we visited our family that lives near Göteborg for the next 2.5 years. When visiting the system bolaget in Mölnlycke we bought a bottle of 2008 Casillero del Diablo Carmenere which cost us 70 SEK. In Delhaize in Belgium this wine is 6.99€, which is 0,13€ more expensive at the time of checking :-)
About the wine: this is an excellent example of where a commericial wine from a big bodega in Chili, Concha y Toro in this case, can give very good quality for a very reasonable price. This was a full bodied wine with the necessary taninnes and enough sourness to be well balanced, which is quite an achievement considering the Carmenere grape and the fact that wine is only 1 year old (maybe two when considering the fact that Chili is in the other hemisphere)
Renwood 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel
This evening (after dinner when the kids were in bed) we opened a bottle of 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel that we bought at Nieuwe Wereld Wijnen during a wine tasting in Sint Antion
We don't regularly drink any Zinfandel wine, as I have probably been mistaken Zinfandel for meaning cheap and not often very good (the most recent/decent zinfandel I drank before is probably the - non comparable - Gallo Family Zinfandel), but this Renwood one is really good.
I recall that Renwood also has some wines that are even older, but those bottles were too expensive to appreciate the difference with this Old Vine bottle.
As you can see on the site it is apparently made of mostly old vines of at least 45 years old. I am not entirely sure what this does to a wine (according to Wikipedia it makes the fruit more concentrated which could indeed be true), but I sure like the result.
The colour of the wine is a deep intens red that does not really show its age yet. Qua taste it has a perfect mix of body, taninnes and sourness (we would score this +0,5,+0,5,+0,5 in the Tastevin Confrerie I would think). Even though the alcohol percentage is very high (15%), it is not present in the taste which makes this a very drinkable wine: enjoy it when you can.
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Image of Renwood Winery via Snooth
We don't regularly drink any Zinfandel wine, as I have probably been mistaken Zinfandel for meaning cheap and not often very good (the most recent/decent zinfandel I drank before is probably the - non comparable - Gallo Family Zinfandel), but this Renwood one is really good.
I recall that Renwood also has some wines that are even older, but those bottles were too expensive to appreciate the difference with this Old Vine bottle.
As you can see on the site it is apparently made of mostly old vines of at least 45 years old. I am not entirely sure what this does to a wine (according to Wikipedia it makes the fruit more concentrated which could indeed be true), but I sure like the result.
The colour of the wine is a deep intens red that does not really show its age yet. Qua taste it has a perfect mix of body, taninnes and sourness (we would score this +0,5,+0,5,+0,5 in the Tastevin Confrerie I would think). Even though the alcohol percentage is very high (15%), it is not present in the taste which makes this a very drinkable wine: enjoy it when you can.
Champage trip 11-12 Aug 2009
We had a wonderful two day trip to the Champagne region in France in order to (re-)fill the cellar with some of the better bubbles.
This google map shows where the good spots are, including some basic comments. I will post more information about some of these houses in further blog post, but for those people that already leave in the following days (yes I know who you are), you can already find some inspiration here.
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This google map shows where the good spots are, including some basic comments. I will post more information about some of these houses in further blog post, but for those people that already leave in the following days (yes I know who you are), you can already find some inspiration here.
Wine courses
For those that want an entry level course in wines: the guys from SoWine that started my intrest in wines are planning another set of 5 eveningcourses on wines in Schoten.
Unfortunately the courses are on monday evenings, thus I will not be able to attend, but if the course is the same quality than the short version that I attened at the Sint Michiel Open Leer Centrum in 2007 it will be a good, no nonse introduction of the how to start appreciating wines and especially how not to fall victim to too much details that someone told me about after attending the wine course at Piva in Antwerp.
Having said all the above, I am still very happy with the course from tastevin that I finished last year, but I will stay on the lookout for new courses to attend in the coming months/years.
Wine auctions ...
Another day, another thing to learn ...
I learned from a cousin of my wife about Veiling Sylvies a place where one can bid online for monthly wine auctions. He even managed to buy a number of bottles of Kasteel Withof, the fancy 1-michelin-star-awarded restaurant that seized business a few weeks ago.
Although the concept of an auction of wine that you didn't even taste is kind of strange to me (as I hardly buy any wine that I haven't tasted myself) it is possible to do some really nice bargains it seems.
I've registered for the site and will surely have a look when the next auction catalog is presented.
I learned from a cousin of my wife about Veiling Sylvies a place where one can bid online for monthly wine auctions. He even managed to buy a number of bottles of Kasteel Withof, the fancy 1-michelin-star-awarded restaurant that seized business a few weeks ago.
Although the concept of an auction of wine that you didn't even taste is kind of strange to me (as I hardly buy any wine that I haven't tasted myself) it is possible to do some really nice bargains it seems.
I've registered for the site and will surely have a look when the next auction catalog is presented.
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