Bonjour...

Wow, what a NOISY wine club that was on Saturday, there is something about those hosted by Mark & Linda, the noise levels reach extremes, even before we start on the tasting.  Linda was told off by one of her sons in the morning for the noise, thats tables turned !

The brief was anything from France & do a little research about your wine, as you know we have trouble meeting the brief.. all five couples did manage the French part, one white & four reds.  The star of the show was Terry who knew a great deal about Chablis, we did at this point manage to stay quiet and listen, brownie points all round & a big gold star for Terry. 

With the rest of the wines, we were very clever & managed to read the back of the bottles, even those in French, well, we translated about 10 words between us!

We started with the Chablis, those that like Sancerre particularly liked this wine as it had a similar taste, though not as flinty. It was agreed not the best Chablis ever but good, the big question, was it worth nearly £15 ?
We moved onto Marks favourite, red Bordeaux, three different ones were tried all with interesting depth of flavour, deep ruby colours and intense aromas, my favourite was Chateau David £6.99 on special from sainsbury.  All improved with the 'superb' Beef Bourguignon, excellent match for these wines.  Again most felt (not all) that these complex wines leave the New World ones standing in their shadows.

We ended with a Shiraz, odd one this one, completely different from the others, even the bottle didn't look very french, tasted sweeter than the others and just not the same depth to it.  Needless to say the bottle was empty at the end...now who finished that up ???

Mark found some wine clips on YouTube, this one is so funny, Mark said it could be any of the girls from the wine club..what does he mean..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ZLvWTTHtE

This French Tasting also prompted a possible trip to France as a group later in the year, can France cope with us ?

Planning ahead, we are to host the October wine club, so I have set down a challenge to each couple.. I gave each couple a pumpkin seed to grow, there will be two prizes in October one for the biggest & one for the heaviest pumpkin, there is to be no cheating ie going out & buying one, it was decided that photographic proof would be required from each couple throughout the growing season.  Well its a bit of fun..

Time to stick a cork in it.

Bye S.