A deal with the Devil

Value Bordeaux. Not two words you see together very often. I got a deal on this. A 2005 classified growth for under ¥5000 is a deal with the Devil. Surely a this kind of wine from this kind of year should command more of a premium? It was with trepidation that I uncorked it, expecting disappointment. Heat damaged in some way, or somewhat sea sick from the long journey to Japan? Of course the first glass was a little closed. The second, drunk the day after, gave me hope. Oh hope. The cruelest of all mistresses.

In this case my hope was not misplaced! Masculine and brooding, this is a Daniel Craig of a wine. The nose has that unmistakable Bordeaux perfume. Cassis and leather. Hint of violets. Wet forest.
Powerful in the mouth, but lacking somewhat in complexity. An almost perfect balance of dark fruit and wood characteristics but none of the floral, vegetal or red fruit character you'd  expect in it's more expensive brethren. Length, medium. I cheated the Devil. Perhaps I should take up the fiddle...

Wine bar Libero: Second anniversary blowout. Part two!

Back to the amazing wine night at Wine Bar Libero, Kyoto! This time I'll go on about the Reds. For your lack of scrolling convenience, I'll repost last week's picture.

I'll begin with the 2005 Romanee St Vivant. Fantastic stuff. Much darker and denser looking than a typical Burgundy. The slight increase in viscosity being apparent on the side of the glass when tipped. The nose was huge and focused with tons of red fruit and a considerable floral character of crushed violets and dried rose petals. Pink and purple pot pourri. Not too sweet. Some fatty characteristics as well. The flavours were not yet resolved. Unsurprisingly, this will need a full 20 years to reach it's peak. Rich and distinctively scarlet in it's fruits, this wine showed none of the vices of over extraction. 

Long on the palate and balanced, despite its youth. I have no doubt in my mind that there'll still be significant fruit left come 2033. Hold your horses!

Next up, one of the wines I brought. I was very excited about the 1978 Lopez de Heredia Gran Reserva Vina Tondonia. I'm sad to say that I completely buggered it up. The night before the party I wanted to open it just to remove the sediment. I was worried about drunk hands mashing the 35 year old cork the day of the event. Just a quick bottle/decanter/bottle/vacuum job then... Wrong! after half an hour prodding and probing with a leaf opener the cork had retreated 3mm into the neck of the bottle. Surely I couldn't use a traditional cork screw? This called for drastic action. Push through and decant.

I tried in vain to mash the cork out of the empty bottle or in some way coax it back into a removable position. After another half hour I gave up and re-purposed an old Chilean wine bottle. By that time this old wine had too much air and was well past it's prime. Who'da thunk it? A 35 year old cork that's like a bullet! That was a blow out, but I also brought a back-up. More on that next time.

 

Wine bar Libero: Second anniversary blowout. Part one.

Sometimes an extravagant event comes around that one really can't miss. Such an event was the second birthday of my good friend Shohei Juge's wonderful Kyoto wine bar, Libero. The guests had been pouring over the offerings from local wine stores for weeks in advance in order to impress the other guests with interesting bottles. There were certainly some expensive stuff on display and here I give a few impressions.

The sparkling on the left is Michel Gonet's 1998 Blanc de Blanc Millesime. I hadn't heard anything about this wine before it's arrival in front of me last saturday. A rich toffee colour, the mousse subsided quickly as it was placed in my hand. A quick cheers and this was half dispatched in double quick time. The second gulp, once the first spring of effervescence had subsided, revealed a little cork taint that simply couldn't be covered up by the nutty, peely, rindy richness of the palate. A shame. This wine had length. And damp cardboard.

Yellow wax cap? Domaines Raveneau's Chablis 1er Cru Montee Tonnerre 2006. Excellent and my white of the night. Everything you could want from a Chablis plus length! To be honest it's been a while since I've had Chablis I usually source my white burgundy from other places. This rolled back the years with simple, sweetly singing green fruit with hints of steel and flint. There's not much more you can say about the palate of this wine. There's also not a lot more that needs to be said. A restrained nose? Well that would be nit-picking.

The other end of the spectrum now with a huge, limey, oaky blockbuster. Kongsgaard's The Judge Chardonnay. This is one chardonnay that actually looks a little green in the glass. Chartreuse? Let's hope not! If you like lime cordial you'll love this! The power of this wine cannot be underestimated and the length is impressive as well. Looking for secondary flavours proved to be an uphill struggle as wave upon wave of citrus coated my mouth. Changing tack seemed to be an appropriate course of action for tasting this. Simply reveling in the weight and resinous texture of this titan proved to be enjoyable enough for me to have a thoroughly good time. Blowed if I can remember the vintage...

I hope to be back soon with part two, the reds!

Sometimes the point is just to enjoy it. Better not miss the point...

Last week I had the pleasure to enjoy something I haven't had for a while (no chortling at the back, please). There are some things that I just can't get excited about anymore. All that anticipation just for something plain and generic. It's gladdened my heart that there are still some cheap thrills out there awaiting those brave enough to experiment (Don't make me put you in detention).  What's the point of veering away from standard Chards and Sauvs?

A mono-varietal Roussanne is a rare bird around here. For those unfamiliar (for those who are totally uninitiated, Tablas Creek has a good primer article here) with this enigmatic grape, pinning down what makes a good example can be a difficult process. Capable of fleshy, fruity aroma bombs and austere, mineral driven understatements alike, fans of this grape can often be divided. One person's meat, etc etc.

Yangarra Estate Vinyard 2012 Roussanne is a wine I've been looking forward to for some time. When an example turned up as a sample, I was round to my importer friend's apartment like a shot to have a couple of glasses. Straight out of the bottle it's nose is promising. Typical honeyed green fruit, both tree and stone, greet the drinker. Icterine and crystalline on the eye. The palate has a balance of fruit, acid and mineral that mirrors the nose and convinces harmoniously. Secondary notes include hints of walnut and button mushroom. For such a reasonably priced bottle the flavour seems to go on for a lot longer than one might expect.  Cellaring for a year or two would, I'm persuaded, yield exciting results. Within the structure of this wine the acid's mineral character I'd expect this wine to slowly evolve from a very flexible light food wine complementing salad and vegetarian food into a very genteel standalone drinker.
Any negatives? Well, could it be said this bottle needs a little more intensity? It could, but that would be missing the point.

The Sampler!

For the uninitiated, The Sampler is a great place to find new and interesting wine. Branches are in South Kensington and Islington in good old London town. I swung by the South Ken shop when I was back in England a couple of weeks ago.
The key advantage to shopping here is that many wines are available for tasting in Enomatic machines! This means you can have a perfectly served sample size of a wide variety of wines. Simply hand over some cash, get a card, get a glass, pop your card in one of the machines and taste away!

I had an hour and a half in here and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Here are my impressions of some of their offering!

2010 Domaine Maroslavac-Leger. Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes. Fine crisp acidity, not as much fruit as advertised. Obviously lovingly produced with wonderfully balanced oak and a touch of creaminess. Great value.

2011 Domaine du Chêne condrieu Restrained fruit with English pear and musk melon underplayed with smokeyness! Pricey.

1998 Viña Tondinia Rioja Blanco. Like a very herbal white Bordeaux. White flowers and some orchard fruit. Acid well balanced and great length but I'd hoped for more for this money

2012 Monsters, Monsters Attack! (Yes, that's its name) Rich, primary Riesling. Candied pineapple and sweet shop on the nose.

1976 Ch Leoville Barton. Obvious pedigree on the nose. Still very fresh and I'd never put this at 35 years old. Hint of sour. Christmas spice Length long! Is this wine holding up better than me? I don't think so. If I paid 90 quid for this I'd feel a bit on the robbed side, the highway robbed side. I suppose there's always a premium on Bordeaux.

2001 Viña Tondinia Very sophisticated red fruit but could certainly put up a fight with richer foods. Dust. Massive length. Restrained and in no need of having to try hard. Just needs to resolve the acid a bit more to be a real stunner. Drink from 2016

2010 Domaine de Chêne Anaïs Saint Joseph Fantastic. Syrah fruit and cloves! Wallop!

2010 Juan Gil Jumilla Monastrell. Double whammy! This is a blast of fruit extraction. A chocolate bramble flamethrower of a wine. BBQ plonk on plenty on steroids and not without savory character to retain the drinkers' interest. Oak spice aplenty.

Bizkaiko Txakolina Gorrondona tinto. Hondorrabi Beltza grape (no, me neither...). Tastes like Blaufrankisch. Acetony.

2010 puy de dôme Pinot Noir. Concentrated and new worldly, this also has a dried meat character to it. Wonderfully cheap!

I hope you get the chance to go to one of their branches soon!

First in the season out of the blocks and running.

Chack out some White Bordeauxs.

Mixed bag shootout. Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the pizza run down. How on earth we managed to have a pizza night without any Italian wines is beyond me, but we did. Why shoehorn in wines that you don't think belong? Which is better do a Hawaiian pizza? Barolo or Chianti? Syrup from the canned pineapple? It wasn't really authentic Italian food so I didn't bother with authentic wine.

 
Our only nod to the Italianate was the Coppola (well, Italian American) 2009 Black Label Claret (left). My previous experience with Coppola wines was a deeply disappointing Green label Claret a couple of years ago. That one reminded me of promotional cardboard cutouts of movie stars that are used in cinemas.
Lots of sheen, big smile and very recognizable but absolutely no depth. The Black label was a much better wine. A stronger core of Cabernet Sauvignon fruit and a broader palate than the Green label. Distinctive Bordeaux blend nose and a decent length. This one could definitely be improved with either a stronger hit of acid or more longer maceration time to impart deeper tannins. Certainly a bit of extra mid palate flavour wouldn't go amiss. Preferably both. A nice squeeze of good quality Petite Verdot please.
The shortcomings didn't dull my guests enthusiasm for this wine, it was gone in the blink of an eye. Overall a pleasant experience but not really my style.
 
If you know me in person, skip this next section. Those people would know of the enthusiasm I have for 2003 Les Fiefs De Lagrange (center). First lets get this over with. Price. This is cheeeeeep! I don't know what your going to pay wherever you live, but in Kyoto the lovely chap/esses at Liquor Mountain are banging it out at about ¥2000 a bottle for loyalty card holders. Buy this shit up, stat. Refined, and as luscious as a lot of decent 2003 Bordeauxs are. The length and nose are surprisingly polished for a wine in this price range. Red fruit predominates, with bright Victoria plum and some bramble fruit both on the nose and palate. Sweet Redcurrant focuses the flavour and I felt that this bottle would be much better suited to beef than half-baked (metaphorically speaking) pizza.
There are also typical Bordeaux savory notes as well and they're welcome, but secondary.
Buy and drink now before I do. Other vintages are readily available and nearly as good.
 
Finally, a bit of a wild card. 2009 Llebre Tempranillo (right). It's very difficult to pick apart this wine. Obviously Tempranillo and lusciously fruity, this is an easy drinking table wine that all liked. This is a wine that would think nothing of being discovered in your bedroom wearing only a smile. Identifying precisely what the components of the nose and the palate is tricky. Drinking this is like being hit in the face by a cherry, with a strawberry. The fruit isn't incredibly intense so don't expect a California fruit bomb. If you must insist on red wine with cheese, this might be a good choice.

Shoot-out Winner? Let's just say Chateau Lagrange did very well indeed.