Exploring The World of Wines

2013-02-01T08:53:00.001+01:00

Just found a great (French) comic that explains the vinification of red wine. While not containing anything new it is actually great to see how the IFV is trying to educate more and more people.

School has started again ...

2012-09-15T09:32:00.001+02:00

If you would have asked me a few years ago if I would ever attend some kind of eveningclasses on a regular basis I would have laughed very hard. But last week marked a new era (for me at least) when I started with the first module of the wine courses organised by CVO at PIVA in Antwerp.

Probably there will be quite some redundancy in the first module due to the fact that I already completed the Tastevin Winecourse a few years ago, but as the total number of hours for this 2 year course is far higher I do expect to learn a lot more here. If nothing else I will at least learn another means to analyse and score wines which should allow me to combine the best of these methods into my own personal method of tasting wines.

Teacher of at least the first module is Michel Terlinck who has an immense knowledge about wines so no doubt there will be a lot to pick from his brain.

Bumped into something new again ... "winetubes"

2012-06-21T19:04:00.001+02:00

Today when browsing the Dutch wijnbloggers.nl blog I bumped into a post about wintubes which are an original way to package wines (and other beverages) for relational gifts or for tasting.

More information about how this works can be found on Winetubes.nl. Especially for tasting a few nice Sauternes or Bordeaux Grand Cru this could be good way to have access to them without having to buy whole bottles (although I haven't compared the price of a bottle to a price of a tube).

Foodinspiration about wine

2012-05-23T21:02:00.003+02:00

Just a short post to point people to this month's foodinspiration magazine which is a "Liquid Special". It speaks about trends in horeca world linked to all liquid things. Of course wine could not be forgotten.

On wine front they mention, of course, the whole bio/natural wine movement which has not yet succeeded to convince me but they also reminded be about byow (Bring Your Own Wine) which is something I have heared of but had not been looking for in the neighebourhoud of Antwerp. I found this website that seems to try and bring this more to the attention but none of the restaurants mentioned there ring a bell to me. Suggestions are welcome ...

One of the non wine related trends are barrel aged cocktails which seems like a really nice thing to try as next to wine I happen to like a good cocktail now and then ... again if someone knows where to drink this around Antwerp I would really like to know.

Chill out with Begude @Mondovino

2012-05-12T23:15:00.000+02:00

This afternoon we visited our favorite local wineshop Mondovino again as James Kinglake from Begude Wines was in the country to show off the latest vintages of his great wines. James personally attended to us in the store which is always fun and after have gone through the whole palette of Begude wines we even managed to convince the guys from Mondovino to open up a bottle of Verum Pinot Noir which is one of my favorite Pinot Noir wines of the moment.

Back to Begude: the "La Folie de Begude" (which you can hardly find on the website) was new for us and really good, especially when compared to Blanquette de Limoux which is the local bubly wine in the Limoux area where Begude is located. Our favorite is still the L'Etoile de Begude which remains amazingly good, especially when comparing the price to similar Burgundy Chardonnay, but the Terroir 11300 is also a very good wine (and even lower in price). We're also looking forward towards the up and coming L'Esprit Pinot Noir that is aged in barrique and will probably complement the Etoile perfectly.

James also brought some of the very complex wines that his resident wine maker Laurent Girault, is making completely independent in a privately owned vineyard. I really loved the red wine based on Grenache and 15 (sic!) other grapes.

In the end we only bought a few botles of Pinot Rosé (just in case the weather improves here in Belgium) but for sure we'll buy some more bottles of these wines when we visit Begude in the summer (only a 20 minutes drive from where we are staying :-) ).

For those who thought I stopped enjoying wine ...

2012-05-10T21:02:00.001+02:00

Although I am not blogging a lot lately (understatemen of the year I guess) there is now a good reason to post something again in this blog: I just won the Wine World Taster Of The Year 2012 Competition which was organised under sponsorship of Gault and Millau's Antwerp Wine Event.

For those that remember I tried this already two years ago (but did not even reach the final back then), but this time I am happy to say that I did not only make the final, but also won the competition which had a main theme my favorite wine country: Spain.

For the occassion this took place in 'de PIVA' which is Antwerp's most famous provincial highshool where a large number of chefs and sommeliers are studying on a daily basis.

Prize money was of the liquid kind and I have been told it is worth a fair amount of money, which I will probably never cash as I am too curious about how this expensive stuff tastes like.

Egg shaped fermentation tanks ...

2011-06-06T21:10:00.003+02:00

It has been a while, but today I learned about something that I considered worth posting about.

I read about egg shaped concrete fermentation tanks used to produce wine which apparently make sure that due to their shape the fermentation is much more complete due to the fluid dynamics of the system.

Marchesi Alfieri La Tota

2010-10-17T20:11:00.000+02:00

We received a bottle of Marchesi Alfieri La Tota wine from friends a while ago and drank it yesterday with a Lasagna we cooked for ourselves: It was wonderful !!!

Very nice dark color, not too much acids (which is a typical problem for a lot of Italian wines IMHO), some spices that remain on the tongue after drinkin.

Reality TV and wine ...

2010-10-08T21:14:00.000+02:00

Although I am not a fan of reality TV as such this one seems quite interesting (related to wine ;-))

YouTube - winemakerstv's Channel

Chardonnay is not only a grape ...

2010-09-13T21:45:00.003+02:00

Low and behold, when browsing the web to find to details about the Chardonnay grape I bumped into an article on Wikipedia that pointed to a village in the Burgundy area called ... chardonnay.

Wow, has it been that long ...

2010-09-06T21:26:00.002+02:00

Looking from the state of this blog it seems that I have stopped exploring, but fortunately this is not the case ...

Due to professional reasons I did take less time to write about my explorations, but I do plan to catch up with logging on the interesting stuff that I did find out.

For starters I'd like to share the wine route that we did during summer in the Loire Valley. Even though the trip we did was actually far too long for cramming it into 4 days, it was very nice trip none the less.

Especially the combination with some of the (in)famous chateaus (not wine related) of the Loire valley made this a very interesting trip.

Merlot wine tasting

2010-03-11T22:32:00.005+01:00

It has been a while already, but I noticed that I haven't yet posted the slides of the Merlot wine tasting evening that I organized for my companies wine club in January.

As the next wine evening is coming up end of this month (about US wines this time) I better publish this one here and now ...

Here are the slides (slideshow provided by Google Docs)

A last(?) thing about Lebanese wines ...

2010-03-01T22:19:00.002+01:00

In yesterday's wine world taster of the year competition there was one question about Lebanese wines hidden as a multiple choice in which it was questioned whether Chateau Musar was a winery in Cyprus, Israel or Lebanon.

As I have been in Beirut in December for work (see earliers posts here and here) and have been paying close attention to the winecards in the restaurants I went for dinner I was quite sure that this Chateau Musar was not Lebanese as I only recalled Chateau Kefraya and Chateau Ksara. Therefore I gambled on Cyprus in stead ... and was of course wrong.

Another thing that I will quickly forget ...

Tasmanian Bubbles ...

2010-02-28T21:53:00.002+01:00

At the wine event in Antwerp's Crown Plaza Hotel (aka het Crest Hotel) today there was a table of Kreglingner Wine Estate, were they serves excellent methode tradicionel from their Tasmanian vineyards.
As Tasmania is quite close to Antarctica they have quite chilly environment there which makes the region comparable to the Champagne areas in France. The terroir is quite different though, but that doesn't make the wines less good. Apparently also some Champagne estates are now buying land in Tasmania, although I cannot really find proof of this on the web.

Even the grapes were traditional in these wines (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir). They really make excellent wines: their Ninth Island Sparkling is super for an entry level wine (although they are also quite expensive as for 15€ I can find a real Champagne as well). The millisime sparkling wines (sold under the brand Kreglinger itself) is also very good and is really a wine I could drink during a full (light) dinner. It has both acids and body that make it an excellent choice.
I drank the 2002 wine although the website only mentions the 1999.

Another small nice to know fact about Tasmania: apparently the rain is so fresh and unpolluted that they even bottle it ... the guy really showed me some bottles labeled Tasmanian Rainwater.

Wine World Taster of the year competition

2010-02-28T21:43:00.004+01:00

Today was my first participation of the "Wine World Taster of the Year" event held in Antwerp (already for the 12th year apparently) which is the only concours for non-professionals in Belgium I've been told.

Reaching the semi-final was (too) easy as it only required answering a few multiple choice questions at home (i.e. close to Google :-) ).
The semi-final however was difficult and I only scored 6/10 for the theoretical part. The practical part required "guessing" the grape and country of origina of 5 different red wines that were all served one-by-one (i.e. no way of comparing). On this part I only scored 1/5.
Clearly I did not reach the final (only 6 out of the 40 contestants were selected), but it may not have been far of as a friend of mine had 7/10 theory and 2/10 on the practical test and was selected for the final (he was 5th in the end)

All in all I am quite happy to have joined the game as it was big fun and I really enjoyed the associated winetasting a lot (more about that one in following posts). I will probably join next year's event as well.

Another French oddity ...

2010-02-06T16:09:00.002+01:00

After almost one month without posting on this blog here is something I just found out:

I was browsing around wikipedia and bumped into the quite recent AOC Saint-Bris which is a village near the Chablis AOC but that makes white wines from Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

In all courses or books I have read on Burgundy I always learned that there is only Chardonnay and Alligote being used for white wine, but Saint-Bris is apparently the exception to all this.

Blend your own wine, or copy a famous one ...

2010-01-07T21:33:00.003+01:00

Today the wine-calender I got for Christmas pointed me to the Fusebox, which is kit that allows you to make your own blend of 6 (high quality ???) Napa Valley mono-cepage bottles in order to either create your own personal favorite or try to mimic one of the great but unaffordable famous wines like Chateau Petrus or whatever.

Their promotion video is nice to watch, but apparently the manual has been removed from their website (probably because it harmed their sales too much: this is where the real value is of course, the bare wines you can buy in any local wine store)

Unfortunately they do not ship outside US thus I will have to find an alternative if I ever want to try something like that myself (or if someone can bring it I'd be very grateful :-))

More Lebanese wine ...

2009-12-16T00:15:00.005+01:00

On the 2nd evening in Beirut there was party sponsored by the seminar organization in a hip restaurant/bar (The Library) where we got some nice food, but unfortunately the wine wasn't too good and the entertainment was a bit too loud to allow easy talking.

We drank a Reserve de Couvent 2007 from Ksara Winery. Even though this wine won at least two silver medals this year I am afraid we drank it somewhat too young.

It anyhow contained too much acids and too little taninnes to really be enjoyed with the steak that was server for dinner.

Luckily the next day we had more luck as we went for dinner in The Exchange next to the hotel where we drank the delicious 2003 (sic!) Chateau Kefraya made by Kefraya winery. The acidity and tannins are in perfect balance with this wooded wine with a lot of alcohol (14.5%) that really came close to some not so cheap bordeaux wines that I drank a while ago.

This 2003 vintage was much better than the 2005 one we drank two days earlier. On the winelist they also posted a prestigious Le Comte de M by Kefraya which is the topwine, but as it was 3 times the price I did not select it.

Lebanese wine ...

2009-12-14T22:29:00.004+01:00

For work I am currently in Beirut, Lebanon and of course we had to try the local food specialities with one of our hosts. Luckily for me this person had no problem with drinking alcohol (which is not evident in the Middle East) and thus asked whether we would like to try some of the Lebanese wines ... of course I could not resist.

He negotiated with the waiter about which bottle of wine (in arabic thus I didn't understand a word about what they were saying) and the ended up choosing a bottle of red Chateau Kefraya.

During dinner we also go some explanation about the geography of Lebanon (I did not know they had mountains upto 3700m high where you can even go skiing) and the famous Beqaa Valley.

After listening to all this (and enjoying the nice wine) I concluded that the climate of the valley, separated from the Mediterranean sea by some mountains and separated from the dessert by some other mountains make it somewhat comparable to Napa Valley in California)

The prohibition ended 76 years ago ...

2009-12-06T21:50:00.003+01:00

According to this article the U.S. prohibition law was (finally) repealed after 13 years of hard times for the nascent US Wine industry.

Both articles mention interesting ways on how the wine industry did actually (partially) survive:

legal production for personal use only (50 gallon per family per year, that is about 190l, which is about 250 bottles ... not sure we consume that much in a year)
selling to church for use during ceremonies
selling of bricks of concentrated grapes with a warning that should prevent people from accidentally making wine ... (cfr. article in Time Magazine)

I just love the ingenuity with which people always succeed in bypassing the law to make money ...

Côtes du Rhône Villages Chusclan Les Ribières red

2009-12-05T20:09:00.002+01:00

Last week one of the colleagues asked me for a bottle of wine we tasted on the wine event on the Argentina and Chili at work as he was organizing a wine tasting for a few of his friends at home.

Unfortunately I was out of Trapiche's Broquel Malbec, but we settled for the other (affordable) winner of the evening, being Echeveria's Reserva Syrah/Carmenere.

What does all this have to do with this Côtes du Rhône Villages Chusclan Les Ribières of the title ? In fact I got that one in return for the Echeveria :-)

When I returned home that evening and showed the bottle there was no stopping us from trying it immediately. It was very good (but it required some food, in the form of some toast and tapenade that we always have in house) .

Some tasting notes:

Very nice deep colored, still looking quite young (purple-ish). The aroma was very special with the vanilla of the oak barrels very much present but at the same time some leather and some minerals were also fighting very hard to gain access to the nose.

With respect to taste there were still a whole lot of tannins (in fact a bit too much in the beginning), but thanks to the also strong acidity of the wine everything was in good balance.

A red D.O. Bierzo wine

2009-11-28T21:56:00.003+01:00

At the same Sparkling Days at Mondovino, there were also a few of their wines for the holidays to be tasted.

Even though most of the wines they served I already know from various other tastings in the same shop we were this time happily surprised by the excellent Pittacum 6 messes en barrica 2005 from the Bierzo DO in Spain.

The most unique thing about this DO is that they don't make wines from the more traditional Tempranillo or Garnache grapes that are used throughout Spain, but rather from the Mencia grape which is believed to be related to the better known Cabarnet Franc (from which you hardly find any mono-cepage wines due to the heavy tannins).

Sparkling days at Mondovino

2009-11-28T21:23:00.003+01:00

Yesterday and today were "Sparkling Days" at Mondovino here in Schoten were I live.

The name of the event was linked to the presence of Sergi Colet of Colet Cava, Penedes. Sergi presented all of the Cavas they they make in his bodega, some of which I (and other people like the sommelier of El Bulli restaurant) score very good. Especially the "A priori" Cava is very good according to us.

Today we also tasted the "Colet Assemblage which is a peculiar kind of Cava as it looks a little bit Rose, but is actually made like a regular white Cava (i.e. no maceration of the grapeskin with the wine). The reason that it is (in some years only) a rose Cava is that the Pinot Noir grapes get too little water in the mediteranean climate and dry into (almost) raisins. At that point in time the colour of the skin enters the inside of the grape.

Bubbles wine tasting at work ...

2009-11-25T22:03:00.004+01:00

Wow, can't believe it has been more than 3 weeks since I put something on this blog. Probably a little bit too busy with other things I guess.

Anyway, I am back and bring some backlog of wine info I definetely want to blog about in the near future. Let's start with something which is still fresh in my mind though: yesterday evening's Wine Club in the company I work for.

Readers of this blog will surely know that we have bi-monthly meetings where we taste some wines around a certain theme (in September it was Chili+Argentina). As the year is approaching the end it was again time to do a tasting of sparkling wines.

The presentation can be found below.

Wine and tech ..

2009-10-31T21:19:00.002+01:00

This evening while reading the BBC Tech News I bumped into this article about how satellite imagery is being used to improve English wines (sic!).

This was an eye-opening article: First of all I did not know at all that wine was being grown in the UK, and second I wouldn't have expected that satellite imagery would help to look at these tiny grapes, but science never stop apparently. Thus lets hope that indeed UK wines will indeed start to flourish (again?) due to this new application of technology.