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.

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.

Wine courses

For those that want an entry level course in wines: the guys from SoWine that started my intrest in wines are planning another set of 5 eveningcourses on wines in Schoten.

Unfortunately the courses are on monday evenings, thus I will not be able to attend, but if the course is the same quality than the short version that I attened at the Sint Michiel Open Leer Centrum in 2007 it will be a good, no nonse introduction of the how to start appreciating wines and especially how not to fall victim to too much details that someone told me about after attending the wine course at Piva in Antwerp.

Having said all the above, I am still very happy with the course from tastevin that I finished last year, but I will stay on the lookout for new courses to attend in the coming months/years.

Wine auctions ...

Another day, another thing to learn ...

I learned from a cousin of my wife about Veiling Sylvies a place where one can bid online for monthly wine auctions. He even managed to buy a number of bottles of Kasteel Withof, the fancy 1-michelin-star-awarded restaurant that seized business a few weeks ago.

Although the concept of an auction of wine that you didn't even taste is kind of strange to me (as I hardly buy any wine that I haven't tasted myself) it is possible to do some really nice bargains it seems.

I've registered for the site and will surely have a look when the next auction catalog is presented.