G'day

A week late with the blog this month, I have been so busy catching up, I know you feel sorry for me.. But don't I have been chilling out in the South of France for a couple of weeks. I have to say it's a bit pricey down there EXCEPT for the wine( thank goodness ) a nice Bordeaux pitched in under a fiver... Shame we flew otherwise I would have brought a few cases home.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, this months wine tasting. Australian was the hosts choice for September, always drinkable. Just seven of us at the get together so we tasted three and a half bottles, where does the half come from you ask.. That was Terry as he was half a couple this month he brought a half bottle of delicious dessert wine, well not half a bottle of dessert wine but half bottle size if you see what I mean, more about that wine later.

First off was a Verdelho 2009 12.5% smooth fresh tropical fruits and vibrant the bottle however had been over wrapped so it took a while to see what the label looked like !

Second up was a Semillion aromas of gooseberry, melon and floral notes. Quite a subtle wine.

Third a Shiraz which caught us all out, no-one recognized it as a Shiraz, the tasting notes combined for this wine come out as a fruity little tart!! Made me smile anyway..

We liked all these wines we couldn't pick a clear winner from them.

Then we tried The dessert wine, a clear winner by far but the question is does it count, or does it matter, it was a Semillion 2005 10% smooth smooth smooth, a must buy. Someone did suggest the it would be yummy poured over good vanilla ice cream, now there's a thought.

Seven at this meeting as I said above, three tasting sheets filled in and four who all agreed that blank was best !

Next month the Pumpkin Competion comes to a head, who will have the biggest, who will have the heaviest, some people were being very cool and not disclosing details of their progress. Pumkins were discussed at one point at the same time Mark text to say stop talking about his...just how did he know that when he was miles away ?? Spooky...

Time to stick a cork in it.

Bye S x

A Tall Tasting

 A Tall Tasting, those that know Lawrence will get the title ~

Those on the ball will notice I am a day late with this months Blog. I do have a really good excuse. I took part in Race for Life on Sunday morning. I walked the race as opposed to run, not because I had a hangover but through injury… although I did have a tiddly headache, I think it was the second Limoncello after midnight that pushed me over the edge !

So you can already guess it was a good get together, great hosts, great wines, great company and a great honour, Lawrence Page came to our wine club and talked us though his selection of wines, he met the brief, wines under £10 and delivered superb good value for money wines.

So lets get started, the first thing we were asked to do was NOT drink the wine, we are a bit on the keen side normally. So we went through the correct process of checking the clarity & colour learning what the differences meant (you are shocked we were learning) followed by the old swill & sniff, there is probably some posh term for this.  Then we learnt how to taste by rolling the tongue and breathing air over, easier said than done,  it produces a lot of giggles coughs & splutters then finally as Ingrid said “Can we drink it now” so we did..

First up was Riversdale Sauvignon Blanc 2010, a real wake your senses up wine, looked pale & clear, aromas of peaches & nectarines and so zingy on the palate, absolutely loved it.  We all agreed it was suited to drinking alone, I don’t mean without friends, although if you prefer to why not… opps digressing as usual… what I meant is without food.

No.2 770 Miles Chardonnay 2010, now we all admitted to having preconceptions about Chardonnay, heavy, buttery and oaky etc.  well how wrong can you be, this was a delight and proved very popular among the group and a favourite of Lawrence & Ingrid. Crisp dry with a hint of pears & vanilla, personally I didn’t get the vanilla, others did.  Mark thought cloves too, so this wine although nice (that famous wine term) was my own least favourite maybe because I don’t like cloves.

No.3 Macon Lugny ‘Les Genievres’ 2009 again another very pleasant surprise.  A family owned & run highly respected wine producer in Burgundy..sorry my notes stop there (yes I do take notes, teachers pet & all that !) . anyway back to this exquisite, well exquisite might be too much, but you get my drift, subtle wine, so smooth and rounded, gentle buttery lemons & smooth fruit made this my favourite wine of the night.  I think if you went back to the sauvignon after this it would be a complete assault on the senses… needless to say I will be buying more of this one.

Now onto the reds, we started with a Pinot Noir, Lawrence had read our blog and noticed our negative comments on the Pinot Noir we had in the past… so could he change our minds & prove that Pinot is worthy of the hype it gets in Decanter (it’s a wine mag for those that don’t know).. when I saw the list of the wines earlier in the week, this is the one I was really itching to try. No it didn’t cause a rash !

AND… yes it was a smooth wine with plum & black cherry notes but it still has that ‘thin’ feel to it, someone said they felt it was neither red nor white wine.. however all said and done we DID like it just not as much as the others, so I think Lawrence proved it was worthy of another chance. 

Oh I suppose you would like to know what it was Neptune Point Pinot Noir 2008 from Malborough New Zealand.

No.5 Kleindal Cabernet sauvignon 2009 (Joint Winner) normally we would be a bit tiddled by this stage and have eaten food to ‘ruin’ our ability to taste the wines properly but Lawrence kept us on the straight and narrow, he poured the wine in sensible measures and only let us eat dry crackers. A superb deep dark blackcurrant coloured wine, soft tannins and tastes of black cherry and currant, a touch of cigar smoke (odd but yes it was there) and vanilla this was a very good wine, again South African isn’t a wine that has come across that well in the past. 

Finally No.6 last but not least, in fact, the joint winner of the evening Lomas Carrera Camenere 2009 from Chile. A country that is always a firm favourite with our wine club, many a raucous evening has been had drinking Chilean wine. This wine from a respected winery was delicious, dark purple in colour, ripe berry aromas and big on taste.  Carmenere was a new grape to us and worth pursuing further I think.

So to sum up an education and tour of six superb wines, proving that the oldest wine merchants in the country know a thing or two about wine !

Just one slight worry, Linda wondered what the slop jug would taste like, I know the wines were good but…

Thank you Lawrence for sharing your time & experience with us, you never know we might be able to twist your arm to join us a sometime in the future.

The evening ran on late into the night, the wines revisted (more bottles opened) delicious antipasto and finally a few liqueur tipples to end.

 Time to stick a cork in it.

Bye S

Aroma Wheel

A useful tasting tool from http://www.aromaster.com/

England's oldest Wine Merchants at our July gathering !

The next wine club in July is an extra special one, we have an 'Expert' bringing wine & experience by the bucket load, well maybe not a bucket load of wine !

Lawrence Page will be guiding us through wines of his choice.  Page & Son is a family business, based in Ramsgate, established over 200 years ago in 1804.

This makes Page & Sons England's oldest family owned Wine Merchants.

Their history taken from Page & Sons website ~

The Beginning
It all began in the year before the Battle of Trafalgar whilst England was fighting the Napoleonic Wars. At that time, Ramsgate was the port from which troops and stores sailed to the Continent and the Duke of Wellington (then Sir Arthur Wellesley) stayed with his Headquarters staff in Ramsgate at the London Hotel (the site now occupied by the HSBC Bank) which was owned by Robert Page who had been joined by his younger brother Richard in 1802.

Wellington's Advice
At that time, there was a threat of invasion by Napoleon and among those caught up in the invasion scare was a grocer named Fisher who offered his shop on the corner of Harbour Street and Market Place for sale and hastily left the town. The Iron Duke, meanwhile, had taken a liking to young Richard, then just 24 and advised him to buy the empty grocer's shop - Richard took his advice and invested his life savings in the new venture in 1804, establishing a business which has been passed on from father to son for seven generations.

Years of expansion
Like all businesses, market trends have altered and each generation has adapted to the needs of the day. After a while, the firm expanded and moved into new premises at 2,4 and 6 Queen Street which boasted some quite magnificent cellars in which the firm carried out the bottling of many wines such as Vintage Ports and Sherries etc. as well as beers. When eventually, it was decided to concentrate solely on the Wine Trade, the firm moved next door to 8 Queen Street where it continued to trade until 1974.

Recent history
Today, the business is run by the sixth and seventh generation of the family - Lawrence and Jonathan Page. In the late 1960's, whilst the firm was successfully expanding its retail shops, there was a substantial growth in the wholesale trade and it soon became apparent that larger, more suitable premises would have to be found from which the firm could operate its service to the licensed trade.

In 1974, Page & Sons moved into a new, purpose built warehouse at Hopes Lane, Ramsgate (built on part of the old Ramsgate Airport). Apart from the benefits for both customers and staff of operating from a new, modern warehouse, it now meant that the firm was able to handle an increased amount of palletised goods as well as offering ample car parking space for customers wishing to call at the warehouse.

http://www.pageandsons.co.uk/

I think this is one month where we will all make the effort to take notes, Mark & Linda no pressure on producing Tasting Sheets for notes & enough pens !!!

Time to stick a cork in it.

Bye

S x

           

'Pants'

Now I know you are thinking 'Pants' what has that got to do with wine, well, not a lot really, although one of the wines didn't score that well and so maybe, could be considered 'pants'. As a serious wine club we would never use such a word to describe a wine of low caliber, when we have a whole host of other terms... Yuk, horrid, nasty, old boots, as you can see we don't quite make it into the Jilly whatever her name is world of descriptive words but then what normal person does... Sorry I am rambling back to the matter in hand and I'll tell you about the Pants later.

This months wine club hosted by The Stones, their RARE emails are finished The Stones, we still don't know their Christian names (joking).. Mark made comment that we'll all become The something or others, though the funny one was Mcokies, this is only amusing to those that know them, so don't worry if you are not rolling round on the floor laughing, I thought it had a nice ring to it. Sorry I digress again, why is that, maybe it's so early...

Anyway back to the wine,(sounding like Ronnie Corbett now, when he sat in his chair telling a rambling story) anyway as I was saying back to the wine..Australian this time, first up and the winner by nine points was McPherson The Full Fifteen, superb, full on, smooth, velvety deep, Rich and fruity at 15% a big wine that didn't disappoint, Ruby Cabernet £6.99 from Laithwaites. Luckily I know a bit about the winning wine as it was mine(ours), I have very little detail about the others notes were scarce, so if any of you have the name etc of your wine let me know....

The second, another red, was okay but didn't have the fullness of the first and had harsher tannins and quite a spicy flavour, this wine tied second with the third wine, a white, a Semillion (is that one L or two ?) nice gentle wine with a peachy taste and a very slight fizz in the mouth.

The fourth wine wasn't popular, a red, compared to the others it was thin tasting, if you know what I mean and a bit harsh, which I think is a bit unusual for an Aussie wine, normally I would put them down as easy and gluggable (technical wine term) everyday drinking wines, so this one was a bit odd, there was something odd about the taste too, sadly, this one did find the slop glass and no-one likes to see that.

The fifth wine, so those that have their finger on the pulse can work out that ten of us made the wine club yesterday, two were late, Geoff playing 36 holes of golf and followed by a meal and prize giving, In case you wondered, he didn't get one, as I said in the morning before he left..No prizes for second place! Double Date Mark was also late as he had to attend and 80th birthday party and yes he did have the wine club already in his diary, just didn't consult it when he accepted the invite to the birthday party, this is ironic after all the gip he has given Mick (one of The Stones) about not having a diary... Sorry I digress again !!

The fifth wine, the final red, last to be tasted and last in the points, or bottom (talking of that, I'll get to the pants in a min.) lots of tannin and spice a Cabernet Shiraz or as I said a Shirab, a few glasses of wine drunk by then !

The big question is does the order you taste the wines reflect their order in rankings, does the first one always make a good impression and is it unfortunate with the last one, as it follows others and food doesn't fair so well?

Mr Mcokie (!) said he had read or heard (probably Radio 4) that if you buy a wine and pay £5 for it due to all the taxes etc you are only paying 40p for the actual wine, no wonder some of those cheap ones are like drain cleaner, not that I have drunk drain cleaner....

Now to the Pants...no can't tell you, you should have been there, although if you do see Mrs Stone you can ask her why she didn't have some of her underwear on that day..got you wondering now! there was more talk of pants (than wine) and for some reason Double Date Mark offered to take photos of pants being worn and we could guess who's who... I think he was joking, although he did offer TWICE!

Sorry the wine content was short but what's new. The Stones excelled themselves a sheet of 'plain' paper for each of us and a pen for notes, I didn't take my glasses, I didn't expect them to have wine tasting sheets so the paper and pen was a surprise... We love them really..

Time to put a cork in it.

Bye S x

Grape minds think..

Hosted this month with a superb early summer BBQ , May’s gathering resulted in a bitter sweet journey through the wonders of German white wine. No -one bought a red, Karen informed us the Germans do in fact make red wine but they keep it to themselves (apparently they don t bother to  export much of it as they produce so little)

The first wine was Wolf Villa (2008)  from Broadstairs Bottle neck. This Pinot Gris (AKA Pinot Grigio in Italy) was a truly ‘Peachy’ example of excellent German wine – the delicate soft fruit flavour was well balanced and quite dry…a delightful and refreshing  little number…surprisingly even Mark poured a second glass!

The second example was again a Pinot Grigio, this time supplied by Mark and Linda. More like a Pinot ‘Gringo’, the  Kenderemannns 2009 was over sweet and mistaken by some as a desert wine (Yuk) Again Karen with her positive head on suggested it may taste better as an accompaniment for the delicious Pavlova ( The hostesses first brave attempt at this dessert) But no, even with such a tasty pud  most of it ended up in the ‘slops’ glass.

The third wine a Chardonnay grape was provided  by The hosts, the classic ‘ Black Tower’ bottle could not be disguised by any fancy wrapping, neither could the taste…it  still had that familiar ‘Black Tower’ tang – award winning or not , no one really enjoyed it.

“Grape minds think a like”  exclaimed Jacqui  as she presented the final offereing – a second bottle of Wolf Villa ...how lucky we were to double up on the best wine of the evening – well done Jacqui and Karen  - you both get top Marks this time!

With disappointment written all over his face, Nick carried on sipping his diet coke…when he finally realised that the evenings winning wine Wolf Villa is not the latest power tool…just a very tasty white wine enjoyed by all.

Well I guess its time to put a cork in it …until the next time.

What a nice change to read another view on the wine club proceedings, we couldn't make it so Mark stepped in as author.

S x

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.