More on Chateau Goubau

To come back to this Chateau Goubau. We tasted both of their red wines (2007 vintage) and both (the entry level La Source and and the more advanced Chateau Goubau) are wonderful to drink right now, but can both age a few years, and have quite some complexity in both aromas and taste. Both wines are aged in large wooden casks which brings them finesse, but not too much of wooden taste.
If you know the prices (7Euro and 10Euro respectively), this is almost too good to be true.

Talking to the owner at the winetasting of wineworld.be we learned some more about their vineyard and the appellation in general (which I don't remember drinking before, but that could be my memory misleading me ...)
Cotes de Castillon is next to the famous (and thus much more expensive) Saint-Emilion. In fact the city centre of Saint Emilion is only 10km from the vineyard, and the grounds that can still call their wine Saint Emillion are only 2km away (Which can be a lot in terroir difference though).

wineworld.be tasting (part 1)

This is a first post on an excellent winetasting of www.wineworld.be that we attended this afternoon in the Antwerp Hilton hotel.

To start with I have to prove that my nuanced view of price vs quality of French wines that I stated yesterday was correct: although most French wines are too expensive for what they are compared to new world wines today's tasting proved differently.

In this case the French Chateau Goubau (owned and worked on by a Belgian couple) had a superb price vs quality, while the Brazilian Salton Vinocola had too high prices for what they had to offer, although the Salton Lunae Branco Frisante was very good.

Wine tasting at Delhaize this morning

This morning I went shopping in Delhaize and was happily amused by the fact that there was a wine tasting event ongoing. I could, of course, not resist joining in and trying of few of the wines.

I tried the white Trio (Sauvignon Blanc), a Riesling not to remember, and the Sunrise Chardonnay (I already bought the Sunrise Carmenere last week). The Trio was the best ones of these whites (in my humble opinion).

After that we moved on to reds. I started with the Santa Digna Carmenere 2008, which showed a lot more body than the Sunrise Carmenere, but which also means it is not for everyone to enjoy easily (although I did). After that we jumped immediately to Torres's Celeste (DO Ribero del Duero) which was just perfect. It is a crianza wine (ie 12 months in oak), 100% tinto fino (aka tempranillo) and is just delicious, especially for its reduced price of 12.75Euro.

Like all crianza tempranillo wines you either like them or not as they have quite a specific taste. In this one the tannins are not too heavy (having been tempered by the oak), and there was still quite a lot of fruit left in the wine (2006 vintage). The alcohol level is quite high (14.5%), but it doesn't show in the aroma's nor the taste of the wine.

Less important, but still fun is that the bottle itself looks impressive as well, with a very nice label that has some stars on it.

After tasting this wonderful wine I was talking to the wine-specialist and we both agreed that Spain still has good price vs quality which is most of the times not true for France. To prove our point we tried a 20Euro bottle of Chateau Poujeuax 2001 (Moulis). This wine was not comparable to the Celeste in taste (also because it it already much older), and I actually did not like it at all.

A fairtrade white wine

This evening when my parents-in-law came by to say hello we drank a nice white wine on the terrace outside as aperitif.

It was an Oxfam's Torrontes - Sauvignon blanc wine that I got as a present a while back. I must say that I was happily surprised to find this wine to be this good.
Apparently this wine is made in La Riojana a cooperation of a few hundred farmers in the North-West of Argentina, but no reference is to be found on the website.


The Sauvignon Blanc's agrum flavour was very well hidden by the Torrontes grape that added more flowery aromas to the wine.

Apparently this Torrontes grape is as specific for Argentina as Malbec is these days although it originally came from the old world (like most grapes in South-America together with the Spanish priests that needed wines for their Catholic ceremonies)

Wine tasting on Chili and Argentina

Last week thursday it was my turn to organize a winetasting in the wineclub we started last year at the company I work. We meet once every two months and one of the people in the club prepares a tasting, using a certain theme.

This month was my turn and I chose red wine from Chili and Argentina as the theme as I like those wines a lot and have quite some of them in my cellar.

I did not focus too much in getting the best of the best wines, but rather I chose a number of very affordable wines that are easy to buy (in Belgium at least) and give good value for money. At the end of the presentation are the ranking scores that each attendee gave and the overall ranking.

As the most expensive wine was almost 3 times as expensive as the next one it (luckily) won as best wine of the evening, but the interesting part is the shared 2nd place ...

Below is the presentation (using some fancy google docs widget, hope that works, if not you can find the presentation here)

My most expensive taste (until now)

Friday evening we joined some friends at the winetasting at Puerta Del Sol wines in Deure. As usual most of the wines we already knew (as we visit them regularly).

Some (not so new) highlights are the Gran Brut Allier Cava (expensive for a cava, but due to the aging in wood a real feast) and the excellent Marti Fabra Vinyes Velles (many explicit but very good taninnes).

At the end of the tasting we were welcomed to a table with a few more exclusive wines ...
First of was the Genium Costers 2005 (>30Euro/bottle) which is really a very, very, very nice priorato wine, but unfortunately it shows in the price. The taste is quite exquisite with a lot of depth and each sip gives you another impression.
To top this Genium Costers (that I tasted before in the shop) the owner of the store decided to give something extra ... after going to the back for while he returned with one of the 5 remaining bottles of Ribas de Cabrera 2001 ...
This wine has a list price of 64Euro, which makes it the most expensive wine I've tasted to date (although I already know this record will be broken on the 8th of October, more about that later).
Is this wine worth its price ? I don't think so ... it was an excellent wine, probably even better than the Genium Costers, but I don't think I've reached the level of taste or aroma awareness that makes me appreciate the price. I will not say that I will never buy this kind of wines (maybe as investment, rather than for drinking ;-)), but for now I don't even consider it.

Wines of Albert Frere sold at Sotheby's

Today there was an auction of the wines of Albert Frere at Sotheby's.

Judging from the estimated and going prices it seems that the crisis is not really hitting too hard on the wine-investors. For example lot 324 (12 bottles of Chateau Petrus 1989) were sold for 2 770.5 Euro per bottle !!!!

As the lot was for 12 bottles, the new owner payed about 33246 Euro for these 12 bottles.

Lot 27 is also nice to see: this is an imperial bottle of 6 liters Chateau Lafitte 2000 that is sold for 8 695Euro. I did not even know they made this big bottles in Bordeaux.

Back to reality: I have a cellar with about 250 bottles. 2 bottles of this Petrus would more than double the value of the complete cellar ...

Icono wine (by Sideral)

We've been drinking this Icono 2002 wine bought at Delhaize last yearlast friday and as I am preparing a talk about Chilenian wines I tried to dive a big deeper into the background of this wine.

When buying the wine we did recognize this Sideral as a wine that we already bought at Mondovino a few years back, although this is a completely different ballgame at about 3x the price of this Icono.

Apparently the company that produces these wines, Viña Altaïr (originally Vina Totihue), is a joint venture between Vina San Pedro and Chateau Dassault (a Grand Cru Classe in Saint Emillion).

Their website only mentions the Sideral wine and an apparently even better (Parker score at least) Altair wine that I haven't seen in Belgium yet. If anyone can explain me what this Icono wine actually is or where I can find more information, drop me a note. (Chances are that it is specially made for Delhaize though)

So far for the background, when drinking this wine you'll see it starts to show some age (2002 is already 7 years ago), both in the colour and the smell (some forest wood and jammy). But the small of cassis (from the Cabernet Sauvignon no doubt) is really still spectacular (and nice).
Qua taste it is a typical wine that we like and drink most often: high alcohol, full taste, some tannines, etc.

Chateau Cantenac - Saint Emilion Grand Cru

Today we opened a bottle of Chateau Cantenac which is classified as a Saint Emilion Grand Cru. This wine was part of a set of 6 bottles that we got when we were 10 years married and was in fact the start of a real wine cellar in our basement.

At the time this 'Grand Cru' was seen as a real sign of superb quality, but having done some reading on the classification system in Saint Emilion I now know that Grand Cru is not that special, Grand Cru Classe is what starts getting special attention in wine circles.

Having said all that: the 2002 vintage (or millisime as they call it in France) is, although not classified as such between the super years of 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005 still really good: Very soft taninnes and still containing a lot of fruit with enough body to fit with the excellent porc roast we cooked up.