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.

Bubbles wine tasting at work ...

Wow, can't believe it has been more than 3 weeks since I put something on this blog. Probably a little bit too busy with other things I guess.

Anyway, I am back and bring some backlog of wine info I definetely want to blog about in the near future. Let's start with something which is still fresh in my mind though: yesterday evening's Wine Club in the company I work for.

Readers of this blog will surely know that we have bi-monthly meetings where we taste some wines around a certain theme (in September it was Chili+Argentina). As the year is approaching the end it was again time to do a tasting of sparkling wines.

The presentation can be found below.

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.

Intermezzo - a nice red Burgundy

Yesterday evening we had a very fine dinner in restaurant het pomphuis, which has a very extensive wine list with wines from all over the world ranging from relatively cheap bottles at 25€ upto a bottle of 1995 millésime (degorged in 2006) champagne
Moët et Chandon for the price of 590€ a bottle ...

Anyway, we didn't have any wine during dinner as we had decided upfront that we would open a really good bottle from our own cellar after dinner. We came home and decided to open up a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet from the Cote de Beaune region in Burgundy.
It was the 2007 vintage bottled by Henri de Villamont.

I don't normally drink Burgundy wines a lot as they are often too expensive for what they really are, but I bought this bottle a while ago during a tasting at Wijnen Van Durme in april. It was still a hefty >20Euro price, but we do think it was worth it ...

After opening the bottle the first thing we notices was the exceptional intense colour that was already really red without hints of purple which is quite strange for a 2007 vintage I though. Next to that the aroma was amazingly fresh, containing lots of red berries and a slight hint of vanilla and other spices.
Taste wise it was very soft, with maybe a tad too much sour.

A nice birthday party with a lot of wine

Yesterday we had a birthday party for a few family members at the same time. We had a nice BBQ and, of course, there was wine ... 

We started of with a nice bottle of rose champagne, and although I am normally not really a fan of rose champagne, this one was really quite good (we got it ourselves in the champagne region a few months back).  The website of the producer is currently down, but you should be able to find it here eventually.

During dinner we drank the excellent Dignus 2004 wine of Bodegas Viña Magaña. It really is an excellent and smooth wine with a perfect balance of taninnes, sourness and body. For the guru affectiados: it got 89 points from Parker which is really good considering the price of this wine.

After dinner there was again the need for some champagne as a pregnancy was unexpedly announced. This time we drank a bottle of Brut Carte d'Or from the excellent Veuve Olivier champange house in Trelou Sur Marne.

To finish the evening we drank a very nice Shiraz from South Africa, but unfortunately I forgot to write down additional information.