Wine blog
My tasting notes of fine wines I have enjoyed.
A personal import from Corsica - I brought this bottle back from Marseille. Tasting it in Brighton with Terry’s Petits Farcis, the wine immediately recalled that hot night in Sartène exactly four Saturdays ago. The wine is surprisingly light in colour in the glass, tannic but not harsh. We made the dominant taste raspberry and not blackberry, which was a surprise for a red wine from France. The Nielluccio grape varietal’s common heritage with the Sangiovese was more apparent in the neutral situation back in England than the bottle of the same wine that I tasted in Marseille.
A survivor bottle from more than forty years ago, kept largely undisturbed in my cellar since the happy times of the New Romantics, just after the marriage of Charles and Diana but also the year of the Falklands War.
Château Chasse-Spleen was considered a Cru Exceptionnel at the time, it has some of the best-placed vineyards in the Haut Médoc and in 1982 was using traditional methods of vinification with excellent keeping properties. So a last chance to taste this classic claret - or a chance at last!
Read more: Château Chasse-Spleen 1982 - Moulis-en-Médoc - Cru Exceptionnel
This bottle of Pinot Gris from Alsace is a personal import by friends of the family of the vigneron, a memorable wine that is a rare pleasure and which is impossible to buy in a shop. My friend for lunch has met four generations of the winemakers and stayed many times in the hotel near the vines. Note the tall shape and brown glass style of the bottle, which is mandated for the Alsace appellation. The Rhineland wine-glasses are my own.
Read more: David Ermel - Réserve Particulière (2017) - AOC Alsace
A Saint Emilion Grand Cru of a vintage nearly thirty years ago, one of the last of my Father’s cellar. It’s a long time ago: in 1995, John Major was Prime Minister, the €uro had not yet been introduced and the UK enjoyed a long summer heatwave. My Father would have been just seventy, still contributing research papers to the academic journals of biology. Me, I was lighting television studio programmes in London.
Classic pairing this, and easier shopping for us while being in France where these bottles are available in many supermarkets. The 2021 Roc de Breyzac, Monbazillac was a reminder of the GLME summercamp of 2005 in Limeuil (Dordogne), where we enjoyed this style of wine as Vin de Table with meals. Tonight in Marseille I paired the Monbazillac wine with premium duck pâté and salad, a substitute for Foie Gras. The wine was a delight, smooth and of course sweet but fragrant and not syrupy. Premium ducks may think they are special but in the end they are just pâté...
