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.

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.

Another French oddity ...

After almost one month without posting on this blog here is something I just found out:

I was browsing around wikipedia and bumped into the quite recent AOC Saint-Bris which is a village near the Chablis AOC but that makes white wines from Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

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.