Very nice dark color, not too much acids (which is a typical problem for a lot of Italian wines IMHO), some spices that remain on the tongue after drinkin.
Marchesi Alfieri La Tota
We received a bottle of Marchesi Alfieri La Tota wine from friends a while ago and drank it yesterday with a Lasagna we cooked for ourselves: It was wonderful !!!
Reality TV and wine ...
Although I am not a fan of reality TV as such this one seems quite interesting (related to wine ;-))
Chardonnay is not only a grape ...
Low and behold, when browsing the web to find to details about the Chardonnay grape I bumped into an article on Wikipedia that pointed to a village in the Burgundy area called ... chardonnay.
Wow, has it been that long ...
Looking from the state of this blog it seems that I have stopped exploring, but fortunately this is not the case ...
Due to professional reasons I did take less time to write about my explorations, but I do plan to catch up with logging on the interesting stuff that I did find out.
For starters I'd like to share the wine route that we did during summer in the Loire Valley. Even though the trip we did was actually far too long for cramming it into 4 days, it was very nice trip none the less.
Especially the combination with some of the (in)famous chateaus (not wine related) of the Loire valley made this a very interesting trip.
Merlot wine tasting
It has been a while already, but I noticed that I haven't yet posted the slides of the Merlot wine tasting evening that I organized for my companies wine club in January.
As the next wine evening is coming up end of this month (about US wines this time) I better publish this one here and now ...
Here are the slides (slideshow provided by Google Docs)
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As the next wine evening is coming up end of this month (about US wines this time) I better publish this one here and now ...
Here are the slides (slideshow provided by Google Docs)
A last(?) thing about Lebanese wines ...
In yesterday's wine world taster of the year competition there was one question about Lebanese wines hidden as a multiple choice in which it was questioned whether Chateau Musar was a winery in Cyprus, Israel or Lebanon.
As I have been in Beirut in December for work (see earliers posts here and here) and have been paying close attention to the winecards in the restaurants I went for dinner I was quite sure that this Chateau Musar was not Lebanese as I only recalled Chateau Kefraya and Chateau Ksara. Therefore I gambled on Cyprus in stead ... and was of course wrong.
Another thing that I will quickly forget ...
Tasmanian Bubbles ...
At the wine event in Antwerp's Crown Plaza Hotel (aka het Crest Hotel) today there was a table of Kreglingner Wine Estate, were they serves excellent methode tradicionel from their Tasmanian vineyards.
As Tasmania is quite close to Antarctica they have quite chilly environment there which makes the region comparable to the Champagne areas in France. The terroir is quite different though, but that doesn't make the wines less good. Apparently also some Champagne estates are now buying land in Tasmania, although I cannot really find proof of this on the web.
Even the grapes were traditional in these wines (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir). They really make excellent wines: their Ninth Island Sparkling is super for an entry level wine (although they are also quite expensive as for 15€ I can find a real Champagne as well). The millisime sparkling wines (sold under the brand Kreglinger itself) is also very good and is really a wine I could drink during a full (light) dinner. It has both acids and body that make it an excellent choice.
I drank the 2002 wine although the website only mentions the 1999.
Another small nice to know fact about Tasmania: apparently the rain is so fresh and unpolluted that they even bottle it ... the guy really showed me some bottles labeled Tasmanian Rainwater.
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As Tasmania is quite close to Antarctica they have quite chilly environment there which makes the region comparable to the Champagne areas in France. The terroir is quite different though, but that doesn't make the wines less good. Apparently also some Champagne estates are now buying land in Tasmania, although I cannot really find proof of this on the web.
Even the grapes were traditional in these wines (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir). They really make excellent wines: their Ninth Island Sparkling is super for an entry level wine (although they are also quite expensive as for 15€ I can find a real Champagne as well). The millisime sparkling wines (sold under the brand Kreglinger itself) is also very good and is really a wine I could drink during a full (light) dinner. It has both acids and body that make it an excellent choice.
I drank the 2002 wine although the website only mentions the 1999.
Another small nice to know fact about Tasmania: apparently the rain is so fresh and unpolluted that they even bottle it ... the guy really showed me some bottles labeled Tasmanian Rainwater.
Wine World Taster of the year competition
Today was my first participation of the "Wine World Taster of the Year" event held in Antwerp (already for the 12th year apparently) which is the only concours for non-professionals in Belgium I've been told.
Reaching the semi-final was (too) easy as it only required answering a few multiple choice questions at home (i.e. close to Google :-) ).
The semi-final however was difficult and I only scored 6/10 for the theoretical part. The practical part required "guessing" the grape and country of origina of 5 different red wines that were all served one-by-one (i.e. no way of comparing). On this part I only scored 1/5.
Clearly I did not reach the final (only 6 out of the 40 contestants were selected), but it may not have been far of as a friend of mine had 7/10 theory and 2/10 on the practical test and was selected for the final (he was 5th in the end)
All in all I am quite happy to have joined the game as it was big fun and I really enjoyed the associated winetasting a lot (more about that one in following posts). I will probably join next year's event as well.
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Reaching the semi-final was (too) easy as it only required answering a few multiple choice questions at home (i.e. close to Google :-) ).
The semi-final however was difficult and I only scored 6/10 for the theoretical part. The practical part required "guessing" the grape and country of origina of 5 different red wines that were all served one-by-one (i.e. no way of comparing). On this part I only scored 1/5.
Clearly I did not reach the final (only 6 out of the 40 contestants were selected), but it may not have been far of as a friend of mine had 7/10 theory and 2/10 on the practical test and was selected for the final (he was 5th in the end)
All in all I am quite happy to have joined the game as it was big fun and I really enjoyed the associated winetasting a lot (more about that one in following posts). I will probably join next year's event as well.
Another French oddity ...
After almost one month without posting on this blog here is something I just found out:
In all courses or books I have read on Burgundy I always learned that there is only Chardonnay and Alligote being used for white wine, but Saint-Bris is apparently the exception to all this.
Blend your own wine, or copy a famous one ...
Today the wine-calender I got for Christmas pointed me to the Fusebox, which is kit that allows you to make your own blend of 6 (high quality ???) Napa Valley mono-cepage bottles in order to either create your own personal favorite or try to mimic one of the great but unaffordable famous wines like Chateau Petrus or whatever.
Their promotion video is nice to watch, but apparently the manual has been removed from their website (probably because it harmed their sales too much: this is where the real value is of course, the bare wines you can buy in any local wine store)
Unfortunately they do not ship outside US thus I will have to find an alternative if I ever want to try something like that myself (or if someone can bring it I'd be very grateful :-))
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