Wine ChroniclesTerroir evolution for Maison Trimbach …
Posted on October 10, 2015
… and the just-released 2008 Clos Sainte Hune, among other delights
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
Among highlights of my visit on 5 October to this marvelous Alsace producer? Two vintages of the famous Clos Sainte Hune. This exceptional wine is a product of the terroir in the Rosacker grand cru vineyard, located in the village of Hunawihr. Stretching over 1.67 hectares, this parcel has been in the Trimbach family for over 200 years.
#winelover founder Luiz Alberto assessing two world class Rieslings
Ideally south and south-east facing vines, with vines averaging 50 years old. They lie on a predominantly limestone subsoil. These factors give this Riesling a unique flavor of remarkable fruit concentration, enhanced by a refined hint of “minerality” (wet stone, to me) on the finish, and we got – for both very different vintages in 2009 and 2008 – pine needle like freshness.
But there were many other highlights to this visit, including tasting with #winelover founder Luiz Alberto, whose wine passion is evident. Read More
Gruaud Larose 2000
Posted on October 6, 2015
Yet more proof (is it really needed?) of why fine Bordeaux is so age worthy…
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
6 October 2015
Gruaud Larose. An excellent Bordeaux, a second growth from Saint Julien. I have always enjoyed the wines from this property. In a blind tasting of both the second and first wine, from the celebrated 2000 vintage, two experienced wine tasters mistook both for a much younger vintage.
Even if sometimes a brett factor in older vintages can be noticeable, the underlying terroir – yes, #winelovers, the terroir – usually ends up dominating the taste, over time in bottle. Read More
Nearly perfect in Prague
Posted on October 2, 2015
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
2 October 2015
This site is about wine chronicles, including things to chronicle around wine. A perfect case in point is Prague. Well, nothing really is perfect, but …
Just walking along the city’s intimate narrow streets enchants anyone with even a minuscule aesthetic sense, never mind the ultra romantic Charles Bridge, or larger streets like Karoliny Svetle, where my hotel – Eurostars Thalia – is located in the historic city’s first district or Praha 1. Read More
Embrace your bad taste
Posted on September 29, 2015
De gustibus (or lack thereof) non est disputandum
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
30 September 2015
I recently joined a wonderful tour subsidized by Vini del Trentino, or the Wine Consortium for Trentino, with a group of international wine educators and writers who had flown in for three days of tastings and cultural discoveries, the details of which will be the subject of a future blog entry.
We came from Israel, Lithuania, Denmark, the UK, Poland and the US among other countries. We tried many types of wines from Trentino – from the rather recent plantings of Müller-Thurgau in high elevation sites (mixed results, but that’s another story), to mid-slope plantings of (red) Marzemino, which was particularly fine at Cantina D’Isera, where I purchased some bottles.
We all got along rather spiffily until our third and final dinner on Saturday 26 September, at the gorgeous Casa del Vino restaurant. After going through various stages of the meal, the evening disintegrated into discord over a supposedly famous wine called San Leonardo, a Bordeaux blend made in nearby Avio. Read More
Bordeaux 2011 four years on: massive blind tasting, with expectations met and some revelations
Posted on September 20, 2015
20 September 2015
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
What is it like to taste over 150 tannic wines over a long weekend in Bordeaux?
Given the very comfortable surroundings of Château Bellefont Belcier, where I was housed, the excellent visits (I discovered a fine Saint Emilion, La Croizille, for example on the opening evening for a dinner there) and an engaging group of tasters from all over the world … it was great.
Bijan Jabbari, Bernard Burtschy and myself at the tasting. Photo by Birte Jantzen
Many thanks to friend and French wine critic Bernard Burtschy for his gracious invitation to take part in this marathon blind tasting held from Saturday morning, 5 September until Monday, 7 September. He organized the tasting and calibrated the scores as collected from all the tasters. He is the wine correspondent for Le Figaro and has been writing about wine for many years. Bravo to Bernard for putting this together!
The conditions of the tasting – all blind, with impeccable service from the team at Bellefont Belcier, fine stemware from Riedel, and great weather (sunny but not too hot outside) – were promising. So many thanks go to the staff of the Grand Cercle and to Emmanuel De Saint Salvy and his team from Château Bellefont Belcier. Read More
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