The CWB French Sticky-Off

Two dessert wines from France - Waitrose and Daniel Lambert / The Wine Society

I have always loved dessert wines; I can't quite say why, but I have always had a sweet tooth. Maybe it's my '70s upbringing. Or just a preference for the sweeter things in life.

But it's not mere sweetness; I also like umami (aka "savouriness") and a bit of freshness in the mix, too.

The best dessert wines walk a tightrope of sweet, fresh and savoury - with a touch of complex bitterness added in.

One region, one grape and one phenomenon dominate here: botrytised Semillon from the Bordeaux sub-region of Sauternes. Nobly-rotten grapes are expensive to produce and expensive to vinify, yet relatively inexpensive to buy due to being largely unfashionable.

Sweet wines are Bordeaux's secret wine hiding in plain sight; delicious, fresh and complex, most command nothing like the premium of their illustrious red wine counterparts.

The best sweet wines of Sauternes are a dessert in their own right and need minimal food accompaniment; a Crème brûlée or blue cheese is often the best match.

Elsewhere in South West France, Petit Manseng also makes delicious dessert wines in Jurancon: it is aromatic with high sweetness and high, natural acidity and complex candied fruit, with exotic flavours.

Domaine Cabidos, Petit Manseng Doux, Jurancon 2015 (£9.95, The Wine Society, independents)

For bragging rights, Domaine du Chateau de Cabidos Petit Manseng Doux is the only known* 100% Petit Manseng dessert wine; it comes from a family producer in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

What's more, Tim Atkin MW puts Petit Manseng in his list of world-class white grapes.

Beeswax, roasted stone fruits, honeysuckle and sweet spices; fresh and juicy with tropical fruits, pineapple, candied fruit, honey and overripe peaches; with high acidity, it finishes almost dry despite the sweetness. 

Very Good and Good Value.

Serve as an aperitif or match with a fruit cheesecake or blue cheese.

Also consider sea-food such as scallops and lobster, and all white meat, for example turkey with cranberry sauce. It also goes well with aged hard ewe’s milk cheese.

SO Sauternes, Bastor-Lamontagne (£9.99, 37.5cl, Waitrose) 

An organic sweet wine that shows off its straw-gold colour beautifully 

Aromas of roasted buttery peaches with vanilla sugar, honeysuckle, beeswax and orange blossom; sweet, waxy and viscous with apricotty-peachy sweetness, sweet spices, ginger and tropical citrus freshness. Long, savoury and complex. And utterly delicious.

Very Good and Good Value.

Pour as an apéritif with tapas, or later in the meal with cheese and sweet puddings.

*****

Update 11/07/21: several people contacted me to let me know that various other wineries make a varietal Petit Manseng dessert wine:

Hal Wilson - Cambridge Wine Merchants: Jurancon Doux Grappe d'Or 2017, Montesquiou Freres - Fortified and Dessert Wine - Cambridge Wine Merchants

Heather Dougherty - House of Townend: Pacherenc du Vic Bilh Collection 50Cl (houseoftownend.com)

Heather Dougherty -  Clos Lapeyre: clos lapeyre vin de jurançon moelleux • La Magendìa de LAPEYRE – Clos Lapeyre (jurancon-lapeyre.fr)

Sanderronden - Vojacek Weijnen: Jurançon 2017 Caubeigt - Vojacek Wijnen Webshop Maastricht

***** 

More on Domaine Cabidos - which gets a nod from Rose Murray-Brown MW: Rose Murray Brown: 12 hidden gems from south west France - Scotsman Food and Drink

The viticultural domaine of the Château of Cabidos is family owned and consists of twenty acres located just below the village of Cabidos, in the north of the Béarn, near the famous slopes of Jurançon in south-western France.

The family wine business was revived by Isabelle de Nazelle in 1992 and developed by her son Vivien, with his wife Maleine and brother Edouard, together with Jean-Michel Novelle, a Swiss oenologist of international renown. In 2002, an air-conditioned cellar was built to ensure the wine was properly stored and in 2007, Mrs. Méo Sakorn-Sériès became the Maitre de Chai, or Cellar Master, who is the person responsible for making and ageing the wine.

Méo Sakorn-Sériès is unique in being the only Thai woman to be a director of a vineyard and winery in the whole of France. In 2015, new owners acquired Château de Cabidos with the aim of continuing its legacy and traditions and producing more of its exceptionally prized wines.

The Petit Manseng grape, which comes from the Pyrenean region of France, is the predominant variety occupying 16 acres of our vineyards, and produces both sweet and dry white wines. The vineyard also has an acre of Chardonnay and an acre of Sauvignon, which work well as a dry blend. The fourth grape is Syrah grown on 2 acres to produce our red wine.

It is so popular that we have been gradually increasing the acreage. Petit Manseng is a grape that ripens late in the season and is particularly well suited for the production of great, sweet wines. It is an aromatic variety, which is distinguished in its youth by notes of peach, citrus and medlar, with a hint of cinnamon.

It is remarkable for its ability to concentrate the sugar in the berries during maturation, whilst maintaining a high, natural acidity. It is an ideal grape for the climate in the Béarn because we are blessed with long, sunny autumns that allow ‘passerillage’. That is to say, the grapes can dry naturally on the vine, which gives them a high sugar concentration and the development of complex aromas of candied fruit, ideal for exquisite sweet wines.

It has very exotic flavours, such as pineapple and mango, and with time the wine reveals aromas of white truffles.

Mission La Caminade, Cahors 2017

A fresh and elegant Cahors Malbec from Intermarché

Mission La Caminade, Cahors 2017

I've been impressed with all the local wines we bought in Cahors on holiday last year; this one continues in much the same vein. Lighter and fresher than you might expect, it evokes a minor right-bank Bordeaux from a warm year.

The second wine of Chateau La Caminade, it is technically very well made and drinking nicely now with some aging potential.

Mission La Caminade, Cahors 2017 (€5, Intermarché) juicy black cherry and dark-berry fruit with red plums and savoury olives. Focused and fresh with rounded and well-integrated gentle tannins,

Good.

Drinking nicely now and can be aged.

Match with red meats.

Zoom Party Two

Two more wines for a zoom lockdown tasting - Cambridge Wine Merchants and Hourlier Wines

Another week, another zoom wine tasting with friends and neighbours. We followed the same formula as previously, crisp white and big red.

Colombard is a Gascon grape from south west France; historically made into Armagnac, it has very high acidity and here is blended with 25% Sauvignon.

Cambridge Wine Merchants' "vin rouge" is a southern Rhône made by Roger Sabon, based in Chateauneuf du Pape. At 15%, it's something of a Beast, but not jammy and there is plenty of understated grip. Tasted straight from the bottle, it is does not yet feel harmonious; it improves with air, however, and only after almost a week does it start to show its best.

Horgelus Colombard-Sauvignon, Cotes de Gascongne (£7.50, Hourlier) herbaceous, pungent and aromatic with lemongrass and white pepper; lychee, melon and limey grapefruit; mineral with piercing, linear acidity. Crisp, well-made and flawless.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

Dink as an aperitif or match with starters such as soused mackerel.

Cambridge Wine Merchants "vin rouge", 2019 (£10, CWM) undisclosed southern Rhône blend with 15% alcohol; floral with juicy dark-berry and black-cherry fruits and spice; warming and alcoholic but with enough freshness to keep it in check, supple with very fine tannins. Excellent winemaking from very ripe fruit.

Will repay cellaring; benefits from extensive aeration or failing that, a light chilling.

Thoroughly enjoyable on opening to Good with aeration.

Match with autumnal stews or barbecue foods.

Vinovalie, Les Galets d'Olt, Cahors, 2015

A fresh and elegant aged Cahors Malbec from Vinovalie

Malbec was, until the 1950s, a blending grape in Bordeaux for beefing up lighter, paler wines; now representing just 1% of the Bordeaux vineyard, its French home has become Cahors where it is traditionally dark, chewy and rather rustic.

A driving holiday last year took us to the region where we stocked up on everyday medal-winners. This wine, like all the others purchased locally, is very different from the stereotype for Cahors; paler, fresher, lower in alcohol and tannins, it has been made with quite the gentle hand in the cellar.

Vinovalie, Les Galets d'Olt, Cahors 2015 (c. €5, Intermarché) juicy red and dark berries, plums and blueberries with vanilla spice and freshness; very fine, well-integrated, gentle tannins. Savoury, with good underpinnings.

Good.

Match with pork rillettes or paté.

For more background on the history of Cahors wine and its three informal classifications (Tradition, Prestige and Speciale), see this excellent summary from Tom Cannavan on his wine-pages site.

House of Townend

Two wines from independent, fourth-generation wine merchant House of Townend

A good independent wine merchant will be able to get hold of interesting wines in relatively small quantities that you will not find from larger retailers.

There are a couple of ways to establish if the merchant is good 1) longevity 2) try a few wines at random.

Independent wine merchant House of Townend has something of a grand history dating back four generations to the early 1900s, so clearly they have been doing something right.

These days they have a couple of commendations from Decanter, but what really matters is whether the wines are any good.

These two wines were not selected at random, but they provide something of an introduction.

Below £10, you are generally not looking at "classic" regions and these two bottles are from areas noted more for value than for heritage. What this means in practice is that you get a modern style of mainstream wine with more of your money going into quality than badging for label-snobs.

They are both well made, sophisticated, fault-free and very easy-to-enjoy.

Le Charme Sauvignon Blanc by Christine Cabri, IGP Pays du Gers (£7.99) made by SW French heroes Producteurs Plaimont, Oz Clarke describes this as "one of the best value Sauvignons in Britain"; expressive, aromatic and zippy in a kiwi style, with fresh green apple and lime acidity, minerality and good, structured underpinnings.

Well made and thoroughly enjoyable.

Drink as an aperitif or match with light starters; goat's cheese crostini or prawns with coriander leaves.

Animado Malbec, Argentina (£9.49) from Argentina's Zuccardi winery, this drinks nicely straight out of the bottle but opens up with some air; juicy blueberry and black cherry fruit with soft strawberries and raspberries and some spice. Fresh, harmonious and easy-drinking with a supple texture. Very deft and elegant.

Fresh and juicy enough to quaff, match with pâté, salami or steak.

Rigal Oltesse, Cahors, 2014

A Cahors wine with a bit of age to go with a dish of prawns

On holiday just outside Cahors, Mrs CWB asked to try a bottle of something local so I picked out a range of award-winners at the supermarket.

Back at Tour de Belfort, I realised that dinner was seafood, so I picked out one of the older wines I'd bought and gave it some time in an impromptu decanter to soften up.

As it happens, it also has a lower alcohol content and some Merlot in the blend, so worked well for the classic Bond-villain combination of red wine and seafood.

Rigal Oltesse, Cahors, 2014 (€5, widely available in France) Malbec/Merlot blend; red fruits, cherries, dried green herbs, old leather and oaky spice. Supple and fresh with fine, firm slightly drying tannins. Warming on the finish, despite just 12% alcohol. Becomes more adept and harmonious with aeration.

Good.

Match ideally with darker game or cheeses; also shellfish

Two Wines From South West France

Two local wines on a holiday in South West France

My rule of thumb for buying wines when on holiday in France is to go for something local for around €5 from the supermarket with some sort of award.

If time allows, tasting and buying directly from the producer is even better, but family holidays are holidays, not wine-tasting-and-buying trips.

Saint Mont is a region in South West France of transformed fortunes; formerly a vast brandy-producer, it is now a smaller, more focused wine area cultivating local, often forgotten grapes and dominated by the Plaimont co-op.

Fronton, just north of Toulouse, is an ancient vineyard area dating back to Roman times with a reputation for rustic wines made from a minimum 50% of local variety Negrette.

Duc de Meynan, 2017, Saint Mont (widely available in France, around €5) aromatic Gascon blend of local heroes, Gros Manseng, Petit Corbu and Arrufiac. Zesty lime, white flowers and citrussy tropical fruits with rich waxiness and a shake of white pepper; supple and full with sweet spices and minerality. Very adept, very pure and very well made.

Good.

Drink as an aperitif, a picnic wine or match with salmon en croute or tarragon chicken.

Château Clamens Cuvée Prestige Fronton Rouge, 2016 (widely available in France for €5, £10 at Gerrad Steel in UK) Negrette / Syrah blend from south west France. Black cherry, elderberry and blueberry fruit, dried green herbs, pencil shavings and fine, persistent tannins. Fresh, inky and harmonious.

Good.

Match with darker game, such as duck or venison.

Eugene's Unicorn Wine - Pink Fizz

Tasting a unicorn pink fizz with winery owner Eugene Lismonde of Tour de Belfort

I have written before (extensively) about Eugene Lismonde and his Tour de Belfort wines - in semi-retirement, he renovated a run-down chateau in his wife's village of Belfort de Quercy, then with a consultant winemaker assisting him, he planted a vineyard and built a winery to make the most elegant wine possible.

Cahors is traditionally a deep, heavy, tannic, slightly rustic wine; Eugene's wines are Cahors in name only - and his whites are not even sold as Cahors, but rather as Cotes de Lot because Cahors has no appellation for whites and Eugene refused to sell them as vins de table.

The winery is pristine and gravity-fed on three levels with bespoke fermenting vats that fill bottom-up to reduce air contact. In the vineyard at harvest time, Eugene monitors the separate pickers and basket carriers, keeps them all working at the same rate and in line and arranges for two rounds of sorting, prior to a final sorting in the winery. The vines are planted at greater than standard density to reduce yields and increase concentration.

There is no romance, no tradition, no "we've always done it this way" about Eugene's winemaking - just an absolute focus on quality, cleanliness and the highest possible quality of fruit. The sort of order, hygiene and innovation that you might expect from a Dutch businessman with a Swiss scientist running the place.

After 15 years, however, Eugene decided he was getting too old to manage the harvest and winemaking process himself, so arranged to sell his grapes to the local co-op; he mothballed the winery and sold off his barrels.

Ever the businessman, he refused permission for the wines to be sold under his brand name of Tour de Belfort unless the wines were made to his (rather exacting) standards.

Eugene is now considering his next move, possibly getting in someone to run the winery on his behalf, but one evening we set aside business issues to taste a few museum pieces wines from his extensive library (100 bottles of each wine from each year), which is carved out of the limestone hill on which the domaine stands.

With the sun setting over the causses (limestone plateaus) of Quercy, Eugene explained that in wine just as in life or business, there is no accounting for chance and the Syrah vines that he planted (along with Malbec, Merlot and Cab Franc for reds) did not produce good enough wine; with poor tannic structure, it was just one of those "terroir" things. So he decided to turn it into a traditional method pink fizz.

He picks a week or so early, carries out the first vinification himself and sends off the resulting base wine off secondary fermentation and aging in the chalk cellars.

What comes back is an elegant pink sparkler, one of the best non-Pinot pink fizzes I can remember tasting.

Made from the Rhone grape in Cahors using the Champagne method, it is typically iconoclastic in approach - and typically elegant to taste.

Tour de Belfort Methode Traditionelle Brut Rosé (NV, N/A) vibrant, crunchy red-berry fruits with Syrah spice; citrussy freshness and minerality with a structured, muscular core; harmonious, deft and elegant; very pure and very precise.

Very Good.

Fresh enough for an aperitif, it also has the substance to stand up to canapes such as crostini, goat's cheese tart or quiche.

Christmas Wines from Your Sommelier

Three Christmas Wines from Your Sommelier

I've been very impressed with Your Sommelier's wines before - and equally underwhelmed by their somewhat Gallic approach to marketing; awkward name, clumsy website, clunky offers.

The A5 hand-outs and folder that came with these wines bespoke enthusiasm, but were reminiscent of a '90s Laithwaites offer, but there is no doubting the quality of the wines.

Crémant d'Alsace Blanc de Blancs Brut N.V. - Domaine Vincent Stoeffler (£13.90) fresh, fruited and floral with citrus, creaminess and white stone fruits; fine mousse and mineral backbone. Poised, well-defined and elegant.

Good.

Drink as a aperitif or match with oysters, shellfish or pork rilletes.

Château Moulin de l'Espérance "Cuvée Ulysse" 2014 - Bordeaux Supérieur (£12.00) Merlot-dominated Bordeaux blend; juicy red-berry fruit with coffee grounds, pencil shavings, sous-bois and leather. Spicy and peppery with fine tannins and a supple texture; fresh and long. Needs extensive aeration - or several years' cellaring.

Good.

Match with roasted red meat.

Gros Manseng Moelleux 2016 Côtes de Gascogne - Vignoble des Aubas (£10.90) more off-dry than a dessert wine; aromatic, slightly pungent with tropical pineapple, guava and passionfruit, beeswax and honey. Sweet-but-fresh and mineral.

Good.

Dry and fresh enough for an aperitif, match with soused salmon or fresh fruit flan.

A South African in France - Lunch with Martin Meinert

Lunch with Grand Mayne's consultant winemaker, Martin Meinert

What do you get if you cross a South African winemaker with a reviving vineyard on the other side of a prestigious demarcation line in France?

Martin Meinert is a South African winemaker who now consults on Domaine du Grand Mayne in south west France's Cotes de Duras, an area popular with British holiday-makers.

It was created out of a derelict farmhouse and abandoned fields in 1985 and run on a partial-ownership model; punters would buy a row or two of vines and then take their dividends in the form of finished product.

The winery has waxed and waned in the intervening period, but founder Andrew Gordon is still involved with the running.

Martin's CV includes experience at top Cape wineries and Lafite Rothschild, as well as Chile, California and Australia, which sets him up perfectly to achieve the winery's vision of making New World style wines in France.

Being just outside the appellation d'origine contrôlée boundary for Bordeaux brings with it a number of opportunities and challenges - recognition is low, but freedom of winemaking is greater and it brings an opportunity for the wines to sell on their own merits rather than as part of "brand Bordeaux".

Overall, the wines were technically very well-made with good fruit - as you might expect from Martin's CV. The entry-level wines were priced ambitiously, but this reflects to an extent the high level of fixed cost in a UK bottle of wine.

The reserves were demonstrably superior and given the price-quality ratio, arguably better value.

Sauvignon Blanc 2016 (c. £10) saline-mineral, fresh and aromatic

Reserve Blanc 2015 judiciously oaked with a good blend of oak, ripe fruit and freshness. Substantial, with good underpinnings. Very deft and accomplished.

Good.

2015 Merlot Cabernet coffee, cherries , spice and freshness

Reserve Rouge 2015 complex oaking, leather and gaminess; red and dark fruits with spices, freshness and hints of florality.

Good.

Moelleux 2012 a blend of S/SB/ChB ripe, roasted peaches, chestnutty beeswax, raisins, spices and cidery acidity. Complex.

Good.

They are available via the winery's website: https://www.domaine-du-grand-mayne.com/uk-shop/wine.htm

Tour de Belfort - Malbec Grand Vin 2011

An aged bottle of Tour de Belfort's Grand Vin

I've been a fan of Eugene Lismonde's Tour de Belfort wines since I first tried them - they are superbly well made, with a combination of elegance, complexity and southern warmth.

The Grands Vins have always struck me as way too young to drink and, although I had been drawing out a case, the time had come to try the last one.

At six years old, it is still youthful and the only signs of age are that it does not require extensive aeration even to start opening up.

Youthful, primary and really only just ready for drinking now, it still has years ahead of it. And 2011 was not even a particularly good year in France.

Tour de Belfort Malbec Grand Vin 2011 dark plum, elderberry and black cherry fruit with pencil shavings, spice and freshness; inky and supple with excellent underpinnings and absolutely no rough edges - this is wine-making of the highest order. Youthful, vibrant and energetic.

Very Good.

Marques et Coop Wine Association Tasting & Lunch

Marques et Coop Wine Association lunch and tasting at Quilon

A tasting of 24 wines – two from each of the 12 “caves-membres” of the Marques et Coop Group in Quilon’s Private Dining Room, followed by lunch.

Marques et Coop, an association of 12 different properties, all ambitious and as yet relatively undiscovered, was set up to promote awareness of the quality and diversity of their wines and represents 4,000 wine growers.

The standard here ws very high; all the wines here scored a Good - and some a Very Good.

Mostly textbook-typical, a few wines did something more unusual or unexpected; the oaked, lees-aged Muscadet, the fresh Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the NV Champagne with base wines no younger than ten years.

If one wine stood out particularly to Jancis Robinson, it was the Astrolabe Cahors Malbec 2014, as yet unbottled. Their sweet wine was rich, honeyed and utterly delicious.

AGAMY
Memoria Vieilles Vignes 2013 Louis Tête - Beaujolais full, plump and expressive. Good.
Les Combes 2013 Louis Tête - Beaujolais-Villages fresh, clean, elegant and well-made. Good.


CELLIER DES PRINCES
Les Hauts des Coteaux 2012 - Châteauneuf-du-Pape rouge red fruits, spice; fresh and supple. Good
Le Cellier des Princes 2014 - Châteauneuf-du-Pape rouge spicy dark fruit; fresh, elegant and supple. Good


CHAMPAGNE CHASSENAY D'ARCE
Confidences brut 100% PN BdN, base wines from 2005 and older; powerful, fresh, elegant, with depth and complexity. Still very youthful. Very Good.
Confidences rosé brut 2009 rosé with 4% Pinot Blanc in the blend; light with delicate red fruits, fresh and youthful. Good.

ESTANDON VIGNERONS
Estandon Légende 2012 – Côtes de Provence barrel-fermented, ageworthy Provence rosé; fuller, more complex, textured and evolved. Good.
Solstice d’Estandon 2015 – Côtes de Provence dusty-musky, fresh and elegant, soft red fruits and a touch of cool mint. Good.

LOIRE PROPRIETES
Jubilation Le Pallet 2012, Muscadet Sèvre & Maine atypical barrel-fermented, lees-aged Muscadet; fuller, richer, more textured and complex with citrussy freshness. A food wine to match with pork rather than shellfish. Good.
Le Fauteuil Rouge 2012 - Chinon raspberry leaf, tobacco leaf and red berries; elegant, concentrated, toasty and supple. Good.

ORTAS CAVE DE RASTEAU
Rasteau Ico(o)n 2010 complex spice and feral aromas, dark berry fruit with fresh cool mint; supple, warming and spicy. As muscular-yet-deft as Rudolph Nureyev. Very Good.
Rasteau Prestige 2011 peppery-funky-spicy with dark fruit and cool mint; soft and supple. Good.

SIEUR D’ARQUES
Toques et Clochers édition limitée 2012, Crémant de Limoux Brut fresh pear and bramley apple fruit; light, elegant persistent and linear. Good.
Toques et Clochers Terroir Haute-Vallée 2014 - Limoux ripe, tropical citrus and melon fruit with some butteryness; elegant. Good.

LES VIGNERONS DE TUTIAC
Lieu-Dit Verdot 2012, Bordeaux 100% Petit Verdot - dark fruit, cool mint and spice; concentrated, long and supple with a grippy finish. Very Good.
Lieu-Dit Ter Pointe 2014 - Côtes de Bourg 100% Malbec - dense and concentrated, ripe, spicy and full with dark fruits; big yet supple with a grippy finish. Very Good.

UDP SAINT-EMILION
Aurelius 2012 Saint-Emilion Grand Cru fresh, adept and very long; old-vine concentration, focused elegant and supple-yet-assertive with very fine tannins. Very Good.
Chateau Tour de Yon 2012 Saint-Emilion Grand Cru earthy, fresh and minty, old-vine concentration, supple, elegant, focused and adept. Very Good.

UNION DES VIGNERONS DE L’ILE DE BEAUTÉ
Prestige du Président 2013 – Corse rouge red and black cherry fruit, fresh, supple and minty with low tannins; elegant and adept with some firmness on the finish. Good.
Prestige du Président 2015 – Corse rosé fresh and light with delicate red fruits. Good.

VIGNERONS ARDÉCHOIS
Terra Helvorum 2014 - IGP Ardèche rouge 100% Syrah - floral and  mineral with red fruits; fresh and poised with low tannins; a northern-Italian-style food wine. Good.
Terre d’Églantier Viognier 2014 - IGP Ardèche blanc 100% Viognier, 40% aged in barrel - relatively neutral and citrussy-leesy; again, more of a northern-Italian-style food white. Good.

VINOVALIE
Astrolabe 2013 Malbec – Cahors rouge cassis, red berries and cool mint; spice, feral notes and dark fruit. Supple and fresh with very fine tannins; well-textured with some firmness on the finish. Very Good.
Astrolabe Vendanges Tardives 2012 - Gaillac honeysuckle, beeswax, butter-roasted peaches and sweet spices. Big-yet-fresh. Very Good.

Other related articles
Jancis Robinson's review
Borsa Vini Italiani 2016

Tour de Belfort - Annual Gonville Tasting

The now-annual tasting of Tour de Belfort at Cambridge's Gonville Hotel

A year ago, I wrote that I did not know whether the people behind Tour de Belfort's organic wines from South West France were fools or pioneers, they seemed so intent on making life difficult for themselves.

A year on and not only are the wines better, but they seem to be working things out a bit more - the wonderful oaked Sauvignon Gris and Grand Vin Malbec are now both drinking nicely out of the bottle and no longer need a long spell in the decanter to open up and become harmonious.

The entry-level wines are as well made and technically adept as ever - the Chardonnay Sauvignon has a gold from Paris, the fizzes of both colours are enjoyable traditional-method wines for Prosecco-ish money and the rosé is smart and sophisticated.

And The Gonville continues to modernise and attract a younger crowd too.

Other related articles
Fools or Pioneers? Tour de Belfort at The Gonville Hotel

Corney & Barrow Christmas Preview

There was a time when I though Corney & Barrow was a bit posh - the double-barrelled name and smart locations gave them a whiff of old-school, moneyed respectability.

 

These days I think of them more as the England football team of wine merchants - a solid collection of what should be star names that do not quite live up to their billing.

 

More often a bit disappointing than thrilling, this early tasting of their Christmas range seemed to reiterate that impression - mostly reasonable wines, too many that were not quite good enough and little that was really noteworthy.

 

Overall, I liked the sweet wines best but found the tannins in the classic reds (I'm looking at you Bordeaux) rather drying and overextracted.

The revelation of the tasting was the English fizz, a Wiston Estate Rose Brut 2011 (£35.95) from West Sussex - toasty, biscuity and pure with assertively chiselled, linear acidity.

If you are planning ahead, here's my recommendation for a mixed Christmas case:

 

At £7.50, the aromatic, crisp Gascogne House White and ripe, spicy Languedoc House Red are modern, expressive, thoroughly enjoyable quaffers.

 

Move up a price bracket and the C&B White Burgundy 2013 (£11.50) and C&B Company Reserve Bordeaux 2012 (£12.50) are more-complex, classic food wines.

 

Finish off with an elegant C&B Sauternes 2010 (£12.25 half-bottle) and either the bright Ruby (£12.25) or adept Tawny (£18.50) ports depending on your budget.

Other related articles

Four Christmas Wines From The Co-op

Wine of The Month: Three Christmas Languedoc Wines

Three Bergerac Wines

Three wines from Bergerac

 

Bergerac sits as an eastern rump-end beyond Bordeaux; further inland, with a more continental climate but mostly the same Bordelais grape varieties, it makes wines with a bit more gutsy effusiveness than its more-aristocratic neighbour.

 

Mayne de Beauregard, Bergerac 2013 (£7.99, Marks & Spencer) Pale in the glass and light at just 12.5% - more fresh and Loire-esque than southern. A blend of Cab, Merlot and Cab Franc, the Cab Franc seems to dominate, with cherries, red plums and classic pine needle aromas.

 

Juicy and refreshing - a classy, well-balanced and enjoyable quaffer.

 

Bergerac Rouge, Château Tour des Gendres 2013 (£7.95, The Wine Society) A darker, bigger, more-substantial beast from an unusual blend of Merlot and Malbec.

 

Complex nose of dark fruit, spice and undergrowth; more ripe dark fruit, spiciness, concentration and grip on the palate with a persistence and firmness on the finish.

 

More plumpness, presence and complexity than the Beauregard. Good.

 

Matches well with toad-in-the-hole.

 

Château Les Sablines Monbazillac 2012 (£9.99 / reduced to £7.99 until 30/12/14, Waitrose) Golden Sandy yellow, with aromas of orange blossom, musky roasted peaches and beeswax. Sweet ripe peaches, barley sugar, candied lemons and tropical fruits with good freshness.

 

A less expensive, if less-complex, alternative to Sauternes.

 

Match with creme brulee or lemon torte and Chantilly cream.

 

Other related articles

Three New World Wines for Christmas

Three Christmas Languedoc Wines

Fools or Pioneers? Tour de Belfort at The Gonville Hotel

Tour de Belfort tasting at The Gonville Hotel, Cambridge

 

They could call us fools or pioneers, but we did things with a dream, not knowing the result of the dream.

- William Christensen

 

The owners of Tour de Belfort seem to want to make life hard for themselves. They make a wine that is utterly atypical for the region, using mostly non-local grapes, on a vineyard planted from scratch.

Unable to find a distributor in the UK, they double up their investment and open a wine shop and cooking school, Le Vin La Table, in a Manchester suburb.

 

But is the wine any good?

 

Well, actually, it's rather impressive; it just does not fit into any convenient pigeonhole and therefore needs to be hand-sold.

 

I tasted through the available vintages at the newly refurbished Gonville Hotel in Cambridge.

With eight grape varieties, Tour de Belfort has plenty of scope for different wines. To the original core range they have also added a crisp, fresh Prosecco-busting fizz, a sophisticated rosé and a rare, oaked Sauvignon Gris Grand Vin. A pink fizz with longer lees aging is due out shortly.

 

The Sauvignon Gris is complex, weighty yet fresh and precise with a nuanced Burgundian sophistication. Aged in second-year oak, it also feels more balanced than the previous year's Chardonnay aged in the brand new oak.

 

But who buys an unusual style of a rare grape from an obscure region?

 

Likewise, the sweet Sauvignon Gris is an unexpectedly elegant, a Moscato-esque, light and fresh semi-sweet frizzante.

 

The Malbec Grand Vin is a serious vin de garde with plenty of stuffing that needs a good decade in the bottle to reach a peak. Even with an hour in the decanter, it is only just approachable.

 

The oaked Cabernet Franc feels more harmonious at the moment and is drinking very nicely now.

 

Made from pesticide-free, hand-sorted grapes, the raw materials for Tour de Belfort's wines are of extremely high quality indeed - and this is reflected in the prices with the "entry-level" wines starting at around £10 and the top-end cuvees in the high teens.

The Grands Vins, however, are arguably the better value, as unlike other flagship wines, they are still priced on a cost-plus basis rather than market pricing; winery owner Sylvie Lismonde told me that demand for their wines is increasing every year, whilst son-in-law Andrew (who was on hand to help pour) feels that pricing the top wines in a higher bracket might actually make them an easier sell.

 

The tasting - an open, free pour event - is now part of the Gonville's annual calendar and gave me an opportunity to see the changes and improvements the hotel has made.

 Formerly a rather sleepy and very Old School hotel, it is quietly modernising - replacing traditional Axminster on the floors with stripped boards, upgrading the reception area and bringing in the sorts of chefs who might just get the place a Michelin star one day.

 

It won't necessarily attract the trendiest of sets just yet, but it is very purposefully heading in a younger and edgier direction.

 

Other related articles

Tour de Belfort at Cambridge Food and Wine Society

The Third Cambridge Tasting - Dinner at The Gonville

Tour de Belfort's New Range‏

Lunch at Le Vin La Table

South West France - Wine Dinner

South West France wines are holding a dinner at The Boundary in Shoreditch on November 5.

As one of the ambassadors for this campaign, the Wine Gang's Joanna Simon will be hosting the event - a four course meal with 12 wines matched to each course.

To whet your appetite, the line-up is:

Aperitif:- Charcuterie Canapés

2013 Rive Haute Colombard Sauvignon

Starter:

Salad of Bayonne ham with truffle.

2013 Domaine Chiroulet Rose

2013 Gouleyant Loin de L’oeil Sauvignon

2012 Les Vignes Retrouvées

Main Course:

Braised ox cheek, smoked boar, root vegetables, red wine sauce

2010 Plénitude

2011 Chateau de Hauterive

2011 Château d’Aydie

2012 Pigmentum Malbec

Cheese:

2012 Domaine de Cassaigne

2010 L’Empreinte

Dessert:

Prune Clafoutis, vanilla cream

2011 Chäteau d’Aydie (Pacherenc)

2011 Domaine Rotier

 

Wednesday, 5th November, 6.45pm, £70 pp
The Boundary, 2-4 Boundary St, London E2 7DD
To book tickets, call the Chateau Boundary ticket office on 020 7613 7564 or email the team at info@chateauboundary.com

If you want to know more about the event generally:

http://southwestfrancewines.com/fantastic-south-west-france-wine-dinner-boundary-london/

Two Reds from South West France - and a Sticky

Two reds and a dessert wine from South West France

If Bordeaux is the aristocracy of wines and Languedoc the minor royalty, these South West wines are landed gentry - complex and sophisticated, what they lack in refinement they more than make up for in terms of personality.

The Reds

Ch Bellevue La Foret, Fronton, 2009 (£15.70 Grapevine Wine Services) 45% Négrette, 40% Syrah, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon

Dark purple; dark fruit, truffley-vegetal damp undergrowth, roasted spices and a touch of sulphurous struck match. Sweet, ripe, cooked dark fruit, sweet spices, toasty oak, vanilla and bitter dark green garrigue herbs. Old-vine concentration.

Fresh acidity that just about manages to hold it all in check and assertive, firm, tannins. Benefits from aeration (better on the second day than on the first) and will age.

Expressive, enjoyable and makes a statement. Good.

Match with rustic, gamey foods, such as venison papardelle.

Domaine d'en Ségur, Cotes du Tarn, 2010 (HBV, £25) 80% Merlot 20% Cabernet Sauvignon

Dark purple, bramble fruit, coffee grounds and sweet spices. Sweet vanilla, pepperiness, sweet ripe, slightly cooked plummy fruit and cassis. Good freshness and minerality.

Long, concentrated and focused; a blue-collar Pomerol. Soft, smooth texture, slightly grippy tannins on the finish.

Rather classier and more restrained than the Foret. Good.

Match with rare red meat, such as lamb chops or Chateaubriand.

The Sticky

Folie de Roi, Pacherenc du Vic Bilh, 2011 (£13.99, Le Bon Vin) 60% Petit Manseng, 30% Gros Manseng, 10% Petit Courbu

Good entry level sticky - ripe citrus, orange blossom and a touch of beeswax. Intense sweetness of overripe, cooked peaches, tropical citrus sweet spice and beeswax savouriness.

Lacks the deftness and complexity of a really assured sticky, but is priced accordingly.

Enjoyable, quaffable sweetie. Match with lemon torte or blue cheese.

All wines provided for review.

Other related articles
Pierre Chanau Pacherenc du Vic Bilh Blanc 2010 - Auchan
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Two Wines from South West France

Two South West France wines from The Wine Society and Les Caves de Pyrene

France's South West regions is one of the country's few remaining oenological frontiers - a diverse up-and-coming region of unfamiliar grape varieties and individual, characterful wines.

Les Vignes Retrouvées, Saint Mont, 2012 (£7.95, Les Caves de Pyrène / The Wine Society) 70% Gros Manseng, 20% Petit Courbu, 10% Arrufiac

Vibrant, aromatic, zesty and pungent; ripe grapefruit with quinine bitterness and flintsmoke minerality. Long and persistent. Very enjoyable. Good.

Serve as an aperitif, or with Mediterranean starters such as mozzarella with pesto and bread with olive oil.

Domaine du Cros, Lo Sang del Païs, 2013 (£10.99, Les Caves de Pyrène) 100% Fer Servadou

Ripe red and black cherries, violets, pencil shavings and dried herbs. Fresh and juicy with some spiciness and something feral; very fine tannins. Beaujolais-esque.

Pure, poised and long. Good.

Match with gamey dishes, such as duck, wild salmon or tuna carpaccio.

Wines provided for review.

Other related articles
Two Picnic Wines From South West France

Two Picnic Wines From South West France

South West France, the hinterland between Bordeaux and Languedoc, is - oenologically - a vibrant, buzzy up-and-coming region that is busy reinventing itself.

Varied terroirs and indigenous grape varieties mean there is plenty to explore here, but a good place to start is with these two crisp picnic wines.

Both are well-made and modern with a southern ripeness cut through with a zesty freshness; they work equally as sippers or with picnic food - mozzarella and olive oil, quiche, cold cuts and cheese.

Esprit de Labastide, Gaillac, La Perle 2013 (£5.95, The Wine Society) - 50% Loin de l’œil, 30% Mauzac, 20% Sauvignon blanc

Golden sandy yellow, a touch of spritz, aromas of stone fruit and sweet spice; sweet ripe stone fruit, good freshness with zesty lime and green herbs.

Persistent, limey, mineral finish.

A great aperitif or match with light starters.

Domaine Chiroulet, Java rose, Cotes de Gascogne (Marc Fine Wines / Drinks of France / Deliciously French) 50% Merlot, 50% Cabernet Sauvignon

Juicy ripe red fruits, hints of fresh green herbs, flintsmoke, minerality, freshness and lime zest - persistent, minerally finish.

A perfect picnic wine.

Both wines provided for review.

Other related articles

South West France Wines with Anthony Rose at Comptoir Gascon

South West France Wines Christmas Masterclass