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 :-))

More Lebanese wine ...

On the 2nd evening in Beirut there was party sponsored by the seminar organization in a hip restaurant/bar (The Library) where we got some nice food, but unfortunately the wine wasn't too good and the entertainment was a bit too loud to allow easy talking.

We drank a Reserve de Couvent 2007 from Ksara Winery. Even though this wine won at least two silver medals this year I am afraid we drank it somewhat too young.

It anyhow contained too much acids and too little taninnes to really be enjoyed with the steak that was server for dinner.

Luckily the next day we had more luck as we went for dinner in The Exchange next to the hotel where we drank the delicious 2003 (sic!) Chateau Kefraya made by Kefraya winery. The acidity and tannins are in perfect balance with this wooded wine with a lot of alcohol (14.5%) that really came close to some not so cheap bordeaux wines that I drank a while ago.

This 2003 vintage was much better than the 2005 one we drank two days earlier. On the winelist they also posted a prestigious Le Comte de M by Kefraya which is the topwine, but as it was 3 times the price I did not select it.

Lebanese wine ...

For work I am currently in Beirut, Lebanon and of course we had to try the local food specialities with one of our hosts. Luckily for me this person had no problem with drinking alcohol (which is not evident in the Middle East) and thus asked whether we would like to try some of the Lebanese wines ... of course I could not resist.

He negotiated with the waiter about which bottle of wine (in arabic thus I didn't understand a word about what they were saying) and the ended up choosing a bottle of red Chateau Kefraya.

During dinner we also go some explanation about the geography of Lebanon (I did not know they had mountains upto 3700m high where you can even go skiing) and the famous Beqaa Valley.

After listening to all this (and enjoying the nice wine) I concluded that the climate of the valley, separated from the Mediterranean sea by some mountains and separated from the dessert by some other mountains make it somewhat comparable to Napa Valley in California)

Some great wines at Van Durme this weekend ...

Next to the Vlaamse Landwijn (of which only the red one was good) that I discussed in the previous post there were also some other wines at the tasting of Wijnen Van Durme this weekend.

From the Cotes de Rhone there was a very nice Vacqueyras 2008 and an even better Gigondas 2007. The Vacqueyras was of course still too young, but it already had this very nice spicy taste.

From Burgundy there was a person from Henri de Villamont that brought 9 different wines with him, ranging from an 'awful' Bourgogne Passe-tout-grains (which is some kind of mixture of Pinot noir and Gamay from Beaujolais region) to a sublime 2005 Fixin 1er cru Clos du Chapitre.

The Bordeaux region was present with a a number of different Medoc, Graves and Saint-Emillion style wines. The best Bordeaux wines of the day were no doubt the excellent (and still affordable) Pomerol, 2005 Ch. La Fleur Saint Vincent and the Moulis, 2005 Ch. Dutruch Grand Poujeaux.

As the non-French wines (which is not the specialty of Van Durme to say the least), there was a very nice Sicilian Syrah, and also a very good and affordable Chilean Cabarnet-Merlot (Santa Carolina is the name, but I doubt it is linked the well known Santa Carolina bodega) that also had a lot of spices and very good taste.

A first try at "Vlaamse landwijn"

It's been about two weeks since I posted on this blog apparently. Time for some quick updates.

This weekend I finally tried my first Belgian Wines. It was not any of the 'Hagelandse'-wine which is probably most (in)-famous, but rather the more regular "Vlaamse landwijn" from 'Domein De Kluizen' near the city of Aalst (Herdersem to be precise).

The tasting was part of another old fashioned, but wonderful, tasting at Wijnen Van Durme in Merksem where they featured 2 dry whites, one sweet white and one red wine from De Kluizen. (and some very nice other wines too)

The red wine was a blend of Dornfelder and Zweigelt grapes and has quite some taninnes and spices in the taste, which made them quite good. I did not like any of the white wines ... although the sweet white wine was supposed to be very good and comparable to the German highest quality Trockenbeerenauslese, I prefer more Sauternes style white sweet wine.

Older wines ...

This evening we were looking for a wine to drink before the TV and decided to have the last remaining bottle of 1998 Condesa de Leganza Reserva (DO La Mancha) which was still in the cellar since a few years. Unfortunately it had turned bad ... the smell contained a lot of (expected) tertiary aromas like forest and fur, but the taste had some unidentified taste that I really did not appreciate at all (it reminded me somewhat of chicory, but it was not the same).

After emptying the bottle in the sink (pity, as we both remember that we liked this wine a lot a few years ago) we went back to the cellar to get another lonely bottle ... this time it was a 1999 Devil's Lair Cabarnet Sauvignon from the well known Margaret River region in Australia.
This one was still perfect ... also here a lot of tertiary aromas like old leather, but this time the taste really matched the nose and was really exquisite.

As interesting side note: this is probably one of the first wines that we bought at more than 10Euro a bottle (somewhere back in 2003 I guess). In fact we bought the cheaper Fifth Leg wine (a blend) from the same estate first, and after doubting somewhat we also bought six bottles of this Cab Sav. Unfortunately this wine was not for sale anymore the year after ...

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.

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.

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.

Think wine is expensive in Sweden ?

Do you think wine is expensive in Sweden ? Think again ...

Last week we visited our family that lives near Göteborg for the next 2.5 years. When visiting the system bolaget in Mölnlycke we bought a bottle of 2008 Casillero del Diablo Carmenere which cost us 70 SEK. In Delhaize in Belgium this wine is 6.99€, which is 0,13€ more expensive at the time of checking :-)

About the wine: this is an excellent example of where a commericial wine from a big bodega in Chili, Concha y Toro in this case, can give very good quality for a very reasonable price. This was a full bodied wine with the necessary taninnes and enough sourness to be well balanced, which is quite an achievement considering the Carmenere grape and the fact that wine is only 1 year old (maybe two when considering the fact that Chili is in the other hemisphere)

Renwood 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel

This evening (after dinner when the kids were in bed) we opened a bottle of 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel that we bought at Nieuwe Wereld Wijnen during a wine tasting in Sint Antion

Image of Renwood Winery via Snooth

us-Zoersel last april.

We don't regularly drink any Zinfandel wine, as I have probably been mistaken Zinfandel for meaning cheap and not often very good (the most recent/decent zinfandel I drank before is probably the - non comparable - Gallo Family Zinfandel), but this Renwood one is really good.
I recall that Renwood also has some wines that are even older, but those bottles were too expensive to appreciate the difference with this Old Vine bottle.

As you can see on the site it is apparently made of mostly old vines of at least 45 years old. I am not entirely sure what this does to a wine (according to Wikipedia it makes the fruit more concentrated which could indeed be true), but I sure like the result.

The colour of the wine is a deep intens red that does not really show its age yet. Qua taste it has a perfect mix of body, taninnes and sourness (we would score this +0,5,+0,5,+0,5 in the Tastevin Confrerie I would think). Even though the alcohol percentage is very high (15%), it is not present in the taste which makes this a very drinkable wine: enjoy it when you can.

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.

Egri Bikavér (bull's blood wine)

My mother went to Hungary, and guess what she brought me as a present ... some Hungarian wine: two bottles of 2006 Egri Bikavér from Ostorosbor producer. I just received them thus did not open them yet, but you can expect a small note on the taste as soon as I tried it.

This wine region has its own AOC (or DHC, Districtus Hungaricus Controllatus, as they call it locally) that is quite liberal though (at least 3 out of 10 grape varieties are allowed to be used).
This reminds me of Chateuneuf-du-pape that also allows (too?) many varieties to be blended to make the taste more or less predictable.

This particular bottle doesn't seem to be a cuvee of any sort (it was bought in the local supermarket of the place she visited), thus I don't know what to expect. It seems to be a rather unusual(for my limited view on wines that is) blend of Zweigelt, Cabernet and Kékfrankos (aka Blaufränkisch). This means it will actuallybe more like an Austrian wine with some French Cabernet thrown in for making is special.

It doesn't seem to have the more traditional Kadarka grape in it, but the Kékfrankos makes it a typical more modern Egri Bikavér that I will (hopefully :-)) enjoy when the time is right.

Thi

Kekfrankos aka Blaufrankisch

A taste of Portugal

A few weeks ago we bought a few bottles of Portugese red wine at the salesweekend of ArteVino. 

I am talking about Vinha da Carrica Reserva  from the Douro Superior region made by the VDS (Vinhos Douro Superior) Vinhos winemaker.

It it made of local grapes the Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franc and Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo) which are 3 out of the top-6 of 48 allowed grapes to make Port.

The wine itself does not really taste like Port, more somewhat Bordeaux-like with its heavy aromas of plum and blackberry.

Anyway, it is another nice example of how Portugese wines don't have to fall behind in the brave new wine world in which we live in these days.

Monte Lindo Malbec/Merlot

On saturday I went to Mondovino to buy one of their promotion wines (MoDa, more on that later) and to prepare for a wine-tasting session on Chili and Argentina that I will be hosting in my company's wine club somewhere in june (more on all that later as well probably).

I knew already that I absolutely want to let people taste the excellent Trapiche Broquel Malbec (slow link) that we have enjoyed already numerous times since a few years. The guy in the shop also recommended a cheaper, probably more accessible for people that aren't big fans of wood-matured wine that I could try. The Alta Vista Finca Monte Lindo Malbec/Merlot blend (the Alta Vista bodega doesn't show the wine on their website, strange).

As it was for the better cause of learning my colleagues to enjoy the greatness of Argentinian wine I decided to buy two bottles and give it a go, even without tasting, which is not something I typically adventure anymore these days.

Anyhow  my wife and I opened the bottle on Sunday evening to enjoy it with a fresh bowl of Chile con Carne and although we initially thought it was a bit of a dissapointment (lightly coloured, lots of alcohol in the aroma, etc.) the bottle didn't survive the evening ...

Conclusion: I do think this is indeed a good wine for its price (about 7€)  to be drank with all kinds of food by all kinds of people.

I will keep you informed about what the colleagues think of it.

Cellar cleanup part 1

On friday I started looking around in my cellar to find some room for the new wines that I bought the week before and bumped into some wines of which I was absolutely unsure if they were still drinkable or not.

One was a Cabarnet Sauvignon from Delhaize (the link points to the 2007 vintage), but I still had 1999 in the cellar. It actually did remarkably well considering its low price and old vintage. It wasn't exactly full bodied or anything but although the cork had clearly suffered a lot there was no oxidation and the wine hadn't evolved to tuile colour yet. In fact it only just started to loose its red colour it seemed.

Another one was untracable Merlot 2003 from Pays d'Oc, but this one I tasted only very briefly to notice that it had turned undrinkable due to oxidation. Colourwise this wine had about the same colour as the 1999 Cab Sav above which indicates that colour alone doesn't always allow to guess a vintage.

The last bottle we tried was a white Argentinian wine  also from Delhaize, but this time we had the 2002 vintage in stead of the 2008 that is currently on the shelves. I personally did not like it at all anymore as there was a very pronounced mineral taste that didn't fit me, but both my parents in law did enjoy it. 

Les goûts et les couleurs, ça ne se discute pas

Is Pinotage's popularity going down ?

According to some people in the wine course I am attending the usage of Pinotage is slowly but surely declining (due to the sometimes harsh taste ...). This seems like a pity to me as have already tasted a few excellent South African Pinotage based wines in the last couple of months.

If anyone has information about the evolution of Pinotage growing I would be interested in receiving your comments.

I have a few bottles of the Raka Pinotage wine in my cellar and I really like the spicy taste of it, other excellent Pinotage wine is the Allee Bleue Pinotage that I tasted last weekend (but didn't buy as the cellar is overflowing ...).
We also tasted an excellent set of Pinotage wines when our colleague from South Africa visited our company wine club last year.

On wikipedia I learned that Pinotage is now also being grown outside South Africa, but unfortunately I haven't found any to taste and compare yet. Looking further on the web for more information I quickly bumped into an article at The Pinotage Club posted a few weeks ago that indicates that the first commercial Pinotage wine was only made in 1959, this seems very recent considering that the grape was already crafted 30 years before that, but this story is confirmed in multiple other sources thus I guess it is true :-)