Chill out with Begude @Mondovino

This afternoon we visited our favorite local wineshop Mondovino again as James Kinglake from Begude Wines was in the country to show off the latest vintages of his great wines. James personally attended to us in the store which is always fun and after have gone through the whole palette of Begude wines we even managed to convince the guys from Mondovino to open up a bottle of Verum Pinot Noir which is one of my favorite Pinot Noir wines of the moment.

Back to Begude: the "La Folie de Begude" (which you can hardly find on the website) was new for us and really good, especially when compared to Blanquette de Limoux which is the local bubly wine in the Limoux area where Begude is located. Our favorite is still the L'Etoile de Begude which remains amazingly good, especially when comparing the price to similar Burgundy Chardonnay, but the Terroir 11300 is also a very good wine (and even lower in price). We're also looking forward towards the up and coming L'Esprit Pinot Noir that is aged in barrique and will probably complement the Etoile perfectly.

James also brought some of the very complex wines that his resident wine maker Laurent Girault, is making completely independent in a privately owned vineyard. I really loved the red wine based on Grenache and 15 (sic!) other grapes.

In the end we only bought a few botles of Pinot Rosé (just in case the weather improves here in Belgium) but for sure we'll buy some more bottles of these wines when we visit Begude in the summer (only a 20 minutes drive from where we are staying :-) ).