There is a great deal of cheap Cava available. So much of it is so cheap and always on some sort of implausibly low price deal that you could sometimes be forgiven for thinking that Cava was the Spanish word for cheap sparkling wine.
Strangely it means the exact opposite. Cava actually means cellar and was introduced as the Spanish legal term for a quality Sparkling wine made by the Traditional Method – the same process used in Champagne. Continue reading
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Eric Aracil popped over the other day, for a bit of relief from a snow-bound Perpignan and to tutor a tasting about the wines of his native Languedoc-Roussillon.
Eric is Catalan and normally concerns himself solely with promoting wines from the Roussillon region, but he was branching out. The new umbrella identity for the whole Languedoc-Roussillon is now the Sud de France and it includes the Gard and Côtes du Rhône areas as well as the Languedoc-Roussillon itself – although confusingly not Provence, which is what leaps to my mind when I hear the phrase ‘the south of France’. Continue reading
Some of you may remember that late last year I tasted through the range from Champagne Philipponnat with Charles Philipponnat. I was hugely impressed and enjoyed it very much, but sadly their top wine, the Clos des Goisses, was out of condition.
Well, yesterday I was able to try it again and to renew my acquaintance with this great single vineyard chamapagne.
I could tell you all about the vineyard, but let’s hear from Charles himself
Philipponnat Clos des Goisses 1999
The pinnacle of the Philipponnat range, this is a single vineyard wine from the 5.5 hectare Clos des Goisses in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ (click here to see a map), which Pierre Philipponnat purchased in 1935.
The vineyard is very steep and faces due South giving excellent exposure, allowing for very ripe grapes to be produced. So favourable are the conditions that they can make a vintage wine from this vineyard in every harvest.
According to the back label the blend was 65% Pinot Noir together with 35% Chardonnay, although other sources say 70% and 30%.
30% is barrel fermented for complexity.
Dosage is just 4.5 grams per litre.
Disgorged in March 2007.
My tasting note:
Pale gold with lemon tints, very bright (even in bad light).
The nose was yeasty and flakey pastry and brioche-like with notes of ozone and an intense minerality.
The palate was above all elegant and poised with a tight mineral structure and a feel of finesse to it. The wine was currently quite tight with just a delicate richness promising what will come with some more bottle age, right now it is about the minerality and a certain salty twang together with a little touch of oak spice just shimmering in the background.
The palate was very dry, the dosage is low, with a lovely rich textured mouth-feel showing how ripe the fruit was from this superb site and excellent year. This texture follows through on to the long, long finish together with buttery and nutty flourishes.
I really liked this champagne, it is complex and interesting and fine with the character of a great wine rather than a sparkling wine – I felt that it really needed to accompany a meal in order to really show its worth and I kept getting visions of grilled dover sole while I was trying it – 95 points.
More information is available on the Champagne Philipponnat website.
Stockist information is available from Champagne Philipponnat’s UK agent: Les Caves de Pyrene
Whilst in the Napa Valley I was fortunate enough to be invited to visit Domaine Carneros. This is a dramatic and beautiful winery surrounded by vines and perched on a hill overlooking the rolling Carneros countryside.
It was created in 1987 as a partnership between US wine company Kobrand and Champagne Taittinger. Indeed Claude Taittinger had been looking for a suitable site for a Californian sparkling wine vineyard since the 1970s. Continue reading
Many of will be aware that I tasted some Virginian wines earlier in the year and was pretty impressed. If you want to read about it again, click here.
Well, the other day I was invited to a specific tasting of Virginia wines and was able to taste 20 wines from the state. Continue reading
Charles Philipponnat was in town the other day and I could not resist the opportunity to try some of his Champagnes.
The Philipponnat family have been growing grapes and making wines in Champagne since 1522. They were originally based in in Aÿ, but Auguste and Pierre Philipponnat moved to nearby Mareuil-sur-Aÿ in 1910, where the Philipponnat Champagne house is still based in the beautiful Château de Mareuil.
Philipponnat has long been a favourite producer of mine, indeed I used to sell their Champagnes when I was a wine merchant, but most of the time I seldom get the chance to try them.
I was delighted therefore that Charles presented a range of six of his cuvées – the bulk of his range. This gave me true insight into the Philipponnat style and demonstrated what elegant and un-showy wines they are. Continue reading
This summer I was lucky enough to be invited to be a judge at the 2009 Michelangelo International Wine Awards in Stellenbosch, South Africa. This is the only one of the many South African wine competitions that uses only non-South African judges. The awards were created in 1997 by the very entertaining Lorraine Immelman and are run by her and Sue van Wyk, a Cape Wine Master who is one of the foremost authorities on Pinotage.
I was honoured to be be invited and enjoyed the process very much indeed; we worked hard tasting many hundreds of wines and visited lovely wineries, saw wonderful places and met many fascinating people. Continue reading
The other day I attended the Wines of Chile Annual Trade Tasting and I was very impressed by many of the wines on show. There were far too many just to taste them all, so I decided to concentrate on the newer areas that are only just beginning to make their presence felt on the UK market. Continue reading
After ten days or so of holiday in Spain I was feeling in an adventurous mood and had stayed still for long enough. I needed a road trip and so set off to see something of the emerging wine region of Utiel-Requena.
This region is in Valencia, but don’t let that fool you, it is deep inland and is very different from the Costas. The wines from Valencia are suddenly for sale everywhere in the region, whereas in the past you really had to hunt them out. There are at least three reasons for this, that I can see:
Firstly there was an anti Catalan back-lash recently which resulted in a transfer of allegiance from the big Catalan Cava brands to local producers, which can be very good indeed.
Secondly there is a real resurgence in Valencian nationalism and reawakening of local culture.
Thirdly the wines of the region have become much better, at all levels and show signs of real ambition.
I wanted to visit one of the very best and most ambitious, an estate that has developed a huge following in Spain: Pago de Tharsys.
This lovely estate is within the Denomiacion de Origen of Utiel-Requena and is actually situated on the outskirts of the town of Requena itself – and what a town it is. It has everything you want from a Spanish town, ramblas, an old centre, an Alcazar or citadel and a castle as well as giving the impression that every building is a bar or restaurant. I loved the place, it is the real Spain and well worth a visit.
You may have wondered why I have been so quiet of late, well, I spent my Summer holiday in Xabia/Javea in the Spanish region of Valencia and for the first time, in many years of going to this part of Spain, Cavas from Valencia filled the Cava shelves in the local shops.
Until this year you had to seek out the local producers as the Catalan giants dominated, so I felt duty bound to check out the new kids on the block. I love sparkling wine and a good Cava can be the perfect drink in Spain during the summer.
Most local Cava houses are small and expensive, so this trend has really resulted in wines from two producers becoming much more widely available and much, much more visible. Continue reading
