May 2011
Wine Australia Tasting
In order to ‘prepare’ as fully as possible for last Monday’s mammoth annual Australian tasting I opened our penultimate bottle of Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz 1993 and drank it with lunch the day before. In the days when you still could carry wine in your hand luggage my wife had brought home a couple of bottles, after playing at the Barossa Valley Music Festival about 15 years ago. Stonewell sits at the top of the Lehmann portfolio but a big vertical tasting conducted in Dublin last year by winemaker Andrew Wigan left some doubts as to how well it ages. Read More...
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JC Boisset 2009
25 May 2011 Filed in: Burgundy Cellar Notes
If there is one thing worth remembering about Burgundy it is this: despite appearances to the contrary it is always changing, like a slowly rotating kaleidoscope, as I am fond of saying far too often. Thus you should never let your opinions about vintages, producers, vineyards, or anything else for that matter, get too entrenched. A case in point is the house of JC Boisset where change (in the right direction) has been in the air for a couple of years now. Read More...
Waterkloof at Thornton's
17 May 2011 Filed in: Tastings Cellar Notes
There was a time, just a few years ago, when I had completely given up on South African Sauvignon Blanc, not because it had turned into a grassy green caricature of itself, like some of its Kiwi cousins, no, it had gone in the other direction. In the process it became a lumbering flabby monster, drenched with alcohol and possessing not one whit of the freshness one wants from this grape. Then last week at a wine dinner in Thornton’s Restaurant, Dublin I tasted the Waterkloof ‘Circumstance’ Sauvignon Blanc 2010 and my healthy, well fed prejudice had to be thrown out the window. Read More...
Whisky Live - Dublin
15 May 2011 Filed in: Tastings Cellar Notes
From the ashes of a chaotic opening hour at yesterday’s Whisky Live event in Dublin I managed to pluck a few Phoenixes in the shape of some wonderful Irish whiskeys. I started at the Mitchell’s stand where the ever-genial Peter Dunne was pouring Green Spot from the new, slightly dumpy, bottle. The label has changed too, and I am not sure if it is for the better, but the whiskey remains delightful, honeyed and spicy, clean and comforting. Read More...
Pure Penfolds
Tasting Penfolds wines in the company of chief winemaker Peter Gago is always a treat and I still have wonderful memories of a wine dinner he presented in Dublin at my invitation two years ago. On that occasion he arranged for a splendid quintet of reds to be shipped direct from the company’s cellars in Australia and the 100 or so wine lovers in attendance that night still talk fondly of the event. But we can’t always be so spoiled and yesterday morning, along with some colleagues, I had the enjoyable task of participating in a live webcast tasting, featuring Peter and colleagues in Adelaide, and beamed around the world to Ireland, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, China, Thailand, Singapore… Read More...
Riesling & Foie Gras
11 May 2011 Filed in: News & Views
On the page it read like a train crash, on the plate it looked more appealing and on the palate it sang like a nightingale, especially when matched with a glass of JJ Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese 2008, introduced by the lady herself, Katharina Prüm. I speak of a dish described as: “Scallops in a foie gras and spaghetti shell,” served at dinner last week in the Brasserie les Saveurs at the St Regis Hotel in Singapore. In short, it was the best dish I enjoyed over the course of five days spent at the Far East’s gastro-fest, the World Gourmet Summit. Read More...
Mayday Brunch in Singapore
02 May 2011 Filed in: Miscellaneous Travel
Having made do with nothing more than an orange for breakfast I was ready for something more substantial by the time I entered the Capella Hotel, Singapore yesterday for the mother of all brunches. On arrival, I caught the unmistakable, gentle but insistent, whiff of white asparagus on the air. Following the trail to source I came across a steaming urn of soup manned by Jan Touschil, head chef at the Magma German wine bistro. It was splendid stuff, delightfully subtle and judiciously seasoned by a light hand. Read More...
Gourmet Abu Dhabi
01 May 2011 Filed in: Travel Food & Wine
Terror, pure and refined, is not what you expect when attending a gourmet festival. When that festival takes place in Abu Dhabi, however, and when a visit to Ferrari World, home to the world’s fastest roller coaster is on the programme, that is precisely what you get. An agonising 92 seconds on this vicious, snaking monster brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘white knuckle ride’. Enough said. Read More...
Oz Shiraz at WGS, Singapore
01 May 2011 Filed in: Tastings Cellar Notes
James Halliday had them chuckling at yesterday’s Australian Shiraz tasting when he announced, shortly after it got underway and the first flight was being scrutinised: “I should say, I heartily disagree with some of my own tasting notes.” (These had been printed in advance on the tasting sheets.) This happens to wine tasters all the time and, far from being seen as a sign of inconsistency, it simply reinforces the fact that a tasting note reflects how a wine tasted at a particular place and time and no more than that. Tasting notes should not be treated as judgements written in stone. Wines change and so do people. Context, as they say, is everything. Read More...
