Cru Bourgeois at the International Wine Challenge 30th Anniversary Ball

A review of Cru Bourgeois wines at the International Wine Challenge awards dinner.

 

The International Wine Challenge, founded by Charles Metcalfe and Tim AtkinMW, celebrated its 30th birthday this year.

 

Any wine competition is only as good as the wines it rewards with accolades, so it therefore relies on the palates of the judges and Chairmen to ensure the oenological wheat is sorted from the vinous chaff.

Overall, I believe wine competitions are A Good Thing - with the aforementioned caveat about maintaining quality.

 

On the odd occasion - usually abroad on a family holiday - when I actually have to buy wine for general drinking for myself, faced with an aisle of wines to choose from, I pick a price point and a style, then invariably look for medal-winners. And so far, this has always served me well enough as an approach.

 

Would the non-medal-winning wine next along the shelf be as good as the one I pick? It might be - but then it might not. The lack of a medal may indicate that it simply was not entered into a competition, or it could have entered and failed to win anything.

 

A sensible medal (silver and above) from a reliable competition takes away that uncertainty and provides assurance of a threshold level of quality and typicity.

For the dinner and award ceremony itself, I sat on the Cru Bourgeois table with fellow blogger Denise Medrano, educator Laura Clay and MW Susan Hulme, along with Frédérique Dutheillet de Lamothe, Director of Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc.

 

Frédérique explained that her remit is both to ensure quality and also to raise the profile of the Crus Bourgeois wines; entry to Cru Bourgeois status for the mid-level wines of the right bank Medoc is not a once-and-forever decision, but re-assessed each year.

 

There is no maximum limit on the number of wineries that can be awarded Cru Bourgeois status, nor any guaranteed entry, but the number tends to hover around the mid-200s.

 

Retailing at around £15 - £25 in the UK, Cru Bourgeois is the solid mid-market of right bank Bordeaux wines - rather more expensive than everyday wines, but nowhere near the astronomical sums that classed growths, garagiste and other investment wines can command.

 

Before dinner, I tasted my way through a couple of dozen 2010 wines and whilst there was not time to take any detailed notes, consistency, quality and typicity were all high; with good fruit, solid underpinnings and "stuffing" plus structural interest, this is definitely a vintage and a mark to look out for; from the 2010 vintage onwards it is placed on every bottle.

The wines I tried were:

 

Médoc

Ch La Branne, Ch d'Escurac, Ch Leboscq, Ch Lousteauneuf, Ch Tour Prignac

Haut Médoc

Ch Arnauld, Ch Bellegrave du Poujeau, Ch Lamothe Bergeron, Ch Larose Trintaudon, Ch Malescasse, Ch Peyrabon

Listrac-Medoc

Ch Baudan, Ch L'Ermitage

Moulis

Ch Brillette, Ch Gressier Gd Poujeau, Ch Pomeys, Ch Dutruch Gd Poujeau

Margaux

Ch Haut Breton Larigaudiere

Saint Estèphe

Ch Le Crock, Ch Lilian Ladouys, Ch Vieux Coutelin

 

UK availability

Château Tour Prignac - 40% Merlot, 60% Cabernet Sauvignon; Nicolas £17
Château Larose Trintaudon - 65% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon; Fields Morris & Verdin £17
Château Peyrabon - 35% Merlot, 59% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot; Mellisima £22
Château Brillette - 48% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Cabernet Franc, 3% Petit Verdot; Nicolas, Spirited Wines, Fine & Rare £25

Château Dutruch Gd Poujeaux - 47% Merlot, 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Petit Verdot; Wine Society £15

Château Ht Breton Larigaudière - 11% Merlot, 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Petit Verdot; Waterloo Wine Co £25
Château Le Crock - 33% Merlot, 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc, 9% Petit Verdot; Berry Bros, Charles Taylor, Wine Story, Justerini & Brooks £15
Château Lilian Ladouys - 43% Merlot, 52% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc; Vineyards Direct, Cambridge Wine Merchants £19

 

I attended the IWC dinner as a guest of Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc.

 

Other related articles

Crus Bourgeois at The Cambridge Tasting

Haut Brion 450 Years Celebration Dinner

IWC Taste of Gold

Good Food Would Choose Bordeaux ?

 

Links

Cru Bourgeois - website

IWC - website, twitter

Aubert et Fils Brut NV Champagne - The Co-op

The Co-op is fast becoming my go-to supermarket for good, inexpensive wines generally and Champagne in particular.

There are, of course, other wines that fizz, but Champagne - good Champagne - has a complexity and interest that lesser sparklers do not achieve.

It is easy to think of Champagne as over-hyped and over-priced fizz - but The Co-op has a range that over-delivers for the money.

This Aubert et Fils NV Champagne is a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier; the white grape Chardonnay provides freshness and elegance, whilst the Pinots bring red fruits and weightiness.

Golden sandy yellow in the glass, it has savoury aromas and red fruits on the nose with hints of toast and truffleyness.

The palate shows crisp orchard fruits, red fruits and leesy savouriness with a fine, elegant mousse and persistence on the finish.

It is crisp enough for an aperitif, but will also stand up to canapes, shellfish or white-meat stews.

£29.99, but reduced to the bargain price of £13.99 until August 27th, 2013; provided for review.

Other related articles
Other Co-op Champagnes: Veuve Monnier NV, Les Pionniers NV
More Co-op wines: Les Grandes Costes Pic St Loup, Two Co-op Reds for Christmas

Links
The Co-op - website, twitter

Pinot Noir Rosé from Alsace

A review of two rosés from Alsace's Dopff & Irion and La Cave Des Vignerons De Pfaffenheim

A cool-climate Pinot Noir rosé makes, at first thought, for an odd concept. It feels like a bit of an anomaly -  the world's most famously finnicky and low-yielding grape made into a picnic wine; it's a bit like driving to the supermarket in a Lamborghini.

And yet in next-door Champagne, it is used extensively, sometimes even solely, to make the local fizz, so there is a precedent; Alsace, being barely any further south but more sheltered, can therefore do the same but producing bigger, fuller more food-friendly wines that don't need secondary fermentation to become interesting.

These two examples are full and crowd-pleasingly ripe, but not overly plump - a sort of Scarlett Johansson of wines.

La Cave Des Vignerons De Pfaffenheim, Pinot Noir Rosé, 2011

Salmon pink in the glass, restrained nose; ripe red fruits, a hint of aromatic smokiness, good savouriness and length, full and weighty with nicely rounded acidity. Gentle persistence on the finish. Good.

Match with salmon or a quiche with tomatoes or red bell peppers.

Dopff & Irion Alsace Pinot Noir Rosé, 2012

This is also lovely - quite a deep, translucent red, on the nose there are hints of smokey spice and beeswax with varietal red fruits.

On the palate, there is lots of ripe red fruit and a fleshy Alsatian richness with some smokey spice. Good savouriness and length with pleasant rounded acidity. Good.

Lovely, well-balanced, easy-drinking rosé; match with picnic food - cold cuts, quiche and cheese.

Other related articles
Two Wines from Dopff & Irion
La Cave des Vignerons de Pfaffenheim - Alsace

Links
Dopff & Irion - website
La Cave Des Vignerons De Pfaffenheim - website

Image credit: Scarlett Johansson http://www.kernelscorner.com/2012/05/scarlett-johansson-avengers-vs-iron-man.html

Matching Loire Wines and Food‏ - with Fiona Beckett

For an evening of matching Loire wines with food, having @winematcher as the presenter is good place to start.

@winematcher, aka Fiona Beckett, is a Guardian columnist who writes a blog on matching food and wine, and who had selected some Loire wines to match with a series of dishes at upmarket hotel, Andaz.

We were a mixed group of food and wine bloggers, but in her introduction, Fiona made the very good point that food bloggers self-evidently have a palate, so merely need to view the wine as one of the ingredients of the meal.

She added that they should also develop a palate memory - essentially, being able to recall what certain wines will typically taste like - in order to have a sense of whether it is likely to match.

Dispelling older myths and cliches, she emphasised the notion of focusing on the general descriptors of the food to find a suitable wine match - light foods delicately cooked need correspondingly light wines, whilst heavier, more robust dishes need bigger wines.

With London in the midst of a heatwave, it was as if the weather had conspired to make it a suitable evening for tasting the light and refreshing wines which are the hallmark of the Loire.

Traditional matches for Loire wines, such as Muscadet and shellfish, Sancerre and goat's cheese, are based on the principle of a light wine with an unfussy dish.

That rather goes against the restaurant zeitgeist of intense, concentrated and unexpectedly contrasting flavours, and that for me was where the exercise did not quite succeed; the wines, all good, when put up against the complex, aromatic, intensely flavoured foods prepared by the Andaz, often seemed a bit overwhelmed.

A dish of Vietnamese prawn and rice noodle salad with coriander leaves and lemon would have been better, I felt, with a more full-bodied, but equally well-structured wine.

However, the one revelation of the evening was a Côt, also known as Malbec - since this is a grape that typically only ripens properly south of Bordeaux, to find a Loire example was unusual to say the least.

The non-surprise of the evening was that two wines from The Wine Society were amongst the best and most popular.

We reviewed the wine in pairs with small dishes of food.

Starter: crostini with goat's cheese and broad beans

Tesco Finest, Les Chaumes, Touraine Sauvignon 2012 citrus nose, crisp and mineral, herbaceous. For me, this was overly lean and was overpowered by the food.

Lionel Gosseaume, Les Marcottes, Touraine (Lea and Sandeman) a Loire Gamay, it had expressively varietal aromas of strawberries and raspberries with lilac and violets plus good acidity. Stands up to the food well, but the red fruits on the finish clash with the herbaceous food aromas.

Vietnamese Prawn and rice noodle salad with lemon juice and coriander

Thierry Delaunay, Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2012 aromatic expressive nose, pure fresh and precise. A good wine, but overpowered by the food and needs to be just that bit bigger.

Morrison's Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2011 less aromatic, more weighty and stands up to the food well. A darker, more yellow colour and has something of a prematurely aged character about it - not quite squeaky clean, perhaps slightly faulty ?

Sole goujons and chips with tartare sauce and lemon juice

For me, deep-fried food needs beer - add in an oily sauce and lemon juice and any wine will struggle, so I avoided these.

Calvet, Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2012 pure varietal Sauvignon aromas, hint of white pepper, fresh linear acidity with aromatic citrus zest and a touch of leanness. Nicely refreshing with the food, like a squeeze of lemon.

Domaine Guenault, Famille Bougrier, Touraine Sauvignon 2011 more colour than the Calvet, bigger, fuller more assured, textured and complex. Good. A popular favourite, too.

Rare seared tuna with a sesame crust and soy sauce

Again, I avoided the bowl of salty dipping soy as inimical to wine.

Domaine Pre Baron, Touraine Sauvignon 2012 pure, precise aromatics, good linear acidity, citrus and aromatic zestiness. Good. For me, this clashed with the nutty toasted aromas of the sesame crust. I would have matched these to a dry oloroso sherry and matched the Sauvignon to something with more coriander and chili aromatics.

Domaine Guy Allion, Les Quatre Pierres Touraine 2010 classic Cab Franc wild raspberry aromas, mushrooms, cherry, sweet ripe red fruits and juiciness; herbaceous palate and a soft texture. The wine proved a good match with the food - one of the best matches of the evening.

Smoked Venison with cider-pickled mushrooms and a red wine jus

Domaine Guy Allion, Les Quatre Pierres Touraine 2010 - the same wine as previously. The acidity cuts through the dish nicely, but the flavours do not match.

Henry Marionnet, Vinifera, Touraine, 2010 a Cot, aka Malbec, this was very dark in the glass with an inky texture, dark fruit and aromas of pencil shavings; a firmness on the palate becomes grippiness on the finish. Good.

Works really well with the meaty, gamey venison which makes sense of its acidity and tannins. The dark-fruit jus and sweet-sharp cider-pickled mushrooms also work wonderfully - a really successful match.

Dessert

For dessert, we were given a Domaine Paget, Sparkling rose NV to try and encouraged to select our own combination from a range of basics - strawberries, raspberries, meringue, Chantilly cream, mascarpone, shortbread and chocolate sauce.

The wine, a deep sockeye salmon pink, was only slightly off-dry with aromas of fresh raspberries. Pleasant and simple with more red berry fruit on the palate, it was a light sparkler.

Eschewing the beautifully elegant visual presentations of some of the food bloggers, I opted to concentrate on finding a match; this meant red fruits and not too much sweetness.

The raspberries and mascarpone worked well with the wine, but the sweetness of the strawberries, meringue and Chantilly cream - although delicious - was too much for it.

At the end of the evening, we were presented with two of the wines we had tried and encouraged to find and write up our own food matches; I am intrigued to see what my fellow bloggers will come up with, but I suspect mine will be more Nantaise cafe and less upmarket restaurant.

Recommended wines

All the wines were good, but those that stood out were:

Domaine Guenault, Famille Bougrier, Touraine Sauvignon - The Wine Society
Domaine Pre Baron, Touraine Sauvignon, 2012 - Majestic
Henry Marionnet, Vinifera, Touraine, 2010 - The Wine Society

Other related articles
Matching Loire Wines to Sushi
Matching SW France Wines At Comptoir Gascon
Domaine Rablais Touraine and a Risotto Recipe

Links
InterLoire - website
Fiona Becket - website, twitter

Matching Loire and Sushi with YO!Sushi

The Loire, France's most northerly wine region on the country's Atlantic side, is home to historic towns, architecture and wines and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; say Loire and I think of bike rides along tree-lined canals with grand chateaux, accompanied by crisp wines and goat's cheese.

Whilst it is home to numerous sub-regions, grape varieties and styles, the key characteristic of Loire wines is a light, refreshing elegance, which makes them perfect as summer sippers or an accompaniment to simple seafood dishes

Perhaps the most famously traditional Loire wine-and-food match is the light, lemony Muscadet with shellfish. But what, I wondered, would be its 21st-century equivalent in Cambridge ?

On a hot Sunday morning, with temperatures in the high teens and rising, I led the CWB family into Cambridge in search of the ideal takeaway pairing.

Armed with a couple of chilled bottles (a rose d'Anjou and a Muscadet) plus a picnic blanket and a Frisbee, our first stop was YO!Sushi to collect a sharing platter of salmon, tuna and prawn sushi with salmon and prawn maki rolls.

With the time to spare, central Cambridge can be a great place to stand and watch buskers, many of whom deserve to be playing to much greater audiences.

We found no sign of soulful singer-songwriter Will Robert, but were captivated by the exotic and hedonistic sound of Fernando's Kitchen, comprising an unassuming double bass, nonchalant-yet-intricate flamenco guitar and a strangely beautiful, other-worldly singer-percussionist.

From here it is just a short meander amongst the colleges to the backs and the river to indulge in our favourite sport of watching punts pass leisurely by and begin the food matching in earnest.

The traditional accompaniments to sushi of ginger, wasabi and soy can easily overpower a wine, but without those, the raw fish has a delicate fatty sweetness that is very wine-friendly.

Creamy avocado adds to this and the sticky rice has a soft sweetness; contrast is provided by the merest hints of wasabi paste and the savoury seaweed used for the maki rolls.

The children, struggling with chopsticks, decided they liked the strips of fish best, whilst Mrs CWB preferred the crunchy prawn maki.

That left me to decide on the wine match and I found the salmon-pink rose d'Anjou to work better, with its ripe red fruits, hint of sweet spice and rounded fresh acidity.

Priced at under a fiver, screw-capped and just 10.5% alcohol, it is also the perfect choice as an unfussy picnic wine.

And so, the serious business of assessing over, it was time to fulfil my parenting duties with the kids and the Frisbee before enquiring if anyone was interested in going to the play-park for an ice-cream.

The Wines
Maison Des Princes, Rose d'Anjou 2011 - £4.69, Morrison's
La Nantaise Reserve Muscadet 2012 - £7.49, Laithwaites

The Food
Sharing Platter - £10, YO!Sushi

Local options

All our Cambridge independents stock a range of Loire wines to match with sushi, including:

Domaine du Bois Bruley, Muscadet Sevre et Maine sur lie 2011, £9.99 - Bacchanalia
Sauvignon Touraine 2011 Domaine de la Rablais, £8.99 - Cambridge Wine Merchants
Domaine des Hauts Pemions Muscadet de Sevre et Maine sur lie, £8.85 - Noel Young Wines

Wines and sushi provided for review.

Other related articles
Fitzbillies, Punting and a Perfect Day Out
Rablais and a Risotto Recipe

Links
InterLoire - website
YO! Sushi - website, twitter

Image credits
Loire: http://www.loire-valley-tours.com/uploads/assets/Biking/BIKE-TOURS-Chenonceau-velo.jpg
Fernando's Kitchen: http://fernandoskitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/34200_412478548357_744043357_4634976_6404235_n.jpg
The Backs: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8b/Punting,_Cambridge,_Summer.jpg/350px-Punting,_Cambridge,_Summer.jpg

Summer Dessert Wines

This is an adapted transcript of my recent broadcast on Cambridge 105 about Summer Dessert Wines - you can access the podcast here.

Dessert wines for different seasons ? Yes ! It's The Great British Summer, it should be warm and sunny - think al fresco dining, Wimbledon with strawberries and cream.

What should we look for in a dessert wine for summer and what sort of things will it go with ?

Well, summer means generally, lighter and fresher wines - the same principle as applies to dry wines.

The first wine I've selected will absolutely go with strawberries and cream; it's also sparkling, so you could also use it to celebrate a British win at Wimbledon.

Moscato Volpi frizzante from Cambridge Wine Merchants - £9.49

Very light, delicate and more-ish - matches really well with the sweetness of fresh fruit. It's semi-sparkling and just 5.5% alcohol.

It’s very elegant prominent with summery flavours of elderflower and ripe peach.

When matching sweet wine to food, the main rule is that the wine should be slightly sweeter than the food. If the food is sweeter than the wine, then the wine's going to seem tart and unpleasant in comparison.

This actually applies to all foods - some savoury foods also have some sweetness in them - gravadlax, chicken liver pate, curries, or a terrine with a fruit chutney; these all match well with an off-dry wine like a gewurztraminer or muscat, or an off-dry Riesling.

Andrea Faccio Moscato d'Asti from Bacchanalia – £6.99 (half bottle)

This is similar to the Volpi in that it's Italian, muscat and sweet. But not fizzy and it's slightly fuller.

It's still a light wine, but you could match this with a summer fruit tart - it will stand up to the pastry base which I don't think the Volpi would.

There are flavours of ripe peach, apricot, galia melon and a touch of sherbet - plenty of ripe-fruit flavour, but also is refreshing enough to drink at a garden party

Kracher dessert wine from Austria, Noel Young Wines - from around £10 per half bottle

Kracher is the name of a family of winemakers based near the border with Hungary, considered to be Austria's greatest and one of the greatest producers of dessert wines in the world.

The wines are big, concentrated, complex, peachy-apricotty dessert wines that are incredible.

Because these are bigger wines, you can match them with heavier desserts - something like peaches roasted in butter with a sprinkling of vanilla sugar would be perfect.

Chateau de Jau, Les Clos de Paulilles, 2008, Joseph Barnes Wines - £11.99 (50cl)

My final suggestion is for a wine to match with chocolate - chocolate may not be exactly a summer dessert, but the weather is not always so summery.

I've often said that there is not a wine that matches with chocolate - usually it needs either a whisky or a ruby port. But, there is a sweet red called Banyuls that is a perfect match for bitter dark chocolate.

Go for a high-cocoa chocolate and you'll have something with lots of bitterness, just a touch of sweetness and plenty of cocoa aromatics

The wine is a sweet red, which may seem a bit odd, but it is delicious - a bit like a port with flavours of raisins, herbs and a sweet-sharpness.
 

Other ideas for sweet summer sippers are:

- off-dry German Rieslings; look for something from the Mosel.

- Alsace does lovely dessert wines; these are fuller and more suited to food, such as gravadlax

- sweet Vouvray

- and of course the most famous dessert wine of all, Sauternes.

Other related articles
July Wine of the Month

Links
Bacchanalia - website
Cambridge Wine Merchants - website
Joseph Barnes Wines - website
Noel Young Wines - website


Main image credit: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOTfWkLzbeWeVg4S-AQ8OKfn1bTS9vT5YdbkIsNwF3SaPo0UZ3PF55DPEo4Jw6cMAe5bD_9WnT1LegkRbcb_fCtk3Q8kyRYCt4q72pwTMrqAIzRXOo-aQAxk-fuZaONK8KC6Iou8HK3bFC/s400/summer-wine.jpg

Salvatore Calabrese Liquore di Limone

This Salvatore Calabrese Liquore di Limone is made from Amalfi lemons picked in the first week of June and macerated for five weeks in fine Cognac.

Its creator - Salvatore Calabrese himself, a swarthy, mustachioed Mediterranean bartender with, it has to be said, a somewhat cheesy grin - claims it to be the best liquore di limone in the world.

And, it has to be said, the result is very good indeed; it has the appearance of still, cloudy lemonade and smells intensely of lemon zest.

The palate is a refreshing and perfectly-balanced mix of warming sweet-sharpness and savoury persistence.

With its refreshing sharpness, it is a perfect digestif after an indulgent meal featuring a few more courses and bit more food than you should really have eaten - which seems to happen quite a lot in Italy.

On a hot sunny day, with eyes closed, you could imagine yourself in a southern lemon grove, backing on to rocky hills and looking out over the Med.

It has a vibrancy and intensity that speaks of hot, Romantic far-off places of sprightly people in flamboyant clothes who live on a diet of peppered foods and strong liquors.

Available from Harrods, Hedonism Wines and thedrinkshop.com at £30 for 50cl; provided for review.

Other related articles
Limoncello at Cambridge Food and Wine Society
Pastis Henri Bardouin

Links
Salvatore Calabrese - website, twitter