Fellow Wine Lovers,
So another weekend approaches with the summer weather playlist still on shuffle. Sport wise we have a spot of football action at the weekend, cricket is being played in wellies and Wimbledon is about to start. We find ourselves wondering if Prince William will go to Jimmy Carr (Jersey) Ltd for tax advice now that he has a fair amount of folding in his money clip.
Winemaker Tasting Wednesday 11th July at 8pm
We are taking a diversion from Cheese and Wine for July and are chuffed to announce that Giacomo Bindi from Podere Il Cocco will be joining us for a tasting of his wines.
Many of you will recognise this as the name behind both our delicious Brunato and Brunello di Montalcino. The estate is on top of Montalcino’s highest hill at around 600 metres and covers about 10 acres.
This is a great opportunity to meet the winemaker and hear about the process from the horse’s mouth as it were. He’s going to bring a couple of interesting bits along and we expect take up to be swift, so don’t miss out.
Cost is the usual £15 and places are limited.
Vintage Champagne
A few weeks ago Alex wrote about Moutard Grand Cuvée, our “go to” Champagne.
I was lucky enough to taste the 2002 Vintage again recently (last week of the Wine School to be exact) and I was reminded how good it is. Made from 100 % Chardonnay, it has a really elegant style, with some brioche notes and apple fruit.
Being such a good vintage its worth tucking a few away in the wine fridge too, to allow it to mellow and the flavours to evolve to more honeyed apple shortbread characters. We’ll confess to a bit of history here, a couple of years ago we drank some of his 1993 which was deliciously mature.
Moutard Pere & Fils 2002 – £43.99 (or buy six for the price of five!)
Tasting this Weekend – Sud de France
This is the last weekend of our mini feature on all that is great about the Languedoc Rousillon.
This week we’ll talk to you about Saint Chinian. About 20 km north of Beziers sitting in the foothills of the Cévennes it is a beautiful area with two distinct styles. Around the village itself, the clay soils give fruitier wines, whereas in the north, schist and sandstones dominate and this kind of acid soil retains very little water, and vine has to adapt to important droughts.
2008 Cazal Viel Vieilles Vignes Saint Chinian – £12.99
70% Syrah, 20% Grenache, 10% Mourvedre. Cazal Viel, with its 135 hectares encompassing 92 different parcels, is the largest estate in St Chinian. Their philosophy is fairly simple, they want to make the best Saint Chinian you can find. We think they are doing a pretty good job, this old vine cuvée is rich and rounded with a little bit of grip to keep it honest. Aged in second use barriques for 12 months to add a little smoky complexity.
Clearly we’ve only scratched the surface on our swift tour of the Languedoc so expect us to revisit it at points in the future.
To provide a bit of balance we’ll also scoot over to South-West France and get our tasting gear around 2011 Cuvée Jean-Paul – £6.79 which is a deliciously fresh blend of Colombard and Ugni Blanc, with a zingy character that puts summer picnics firmly in your mind.
Think that’ll do us for this week except to say “Go on England”