Jugendstil Veltliner

This is a lovely Gruner Veltliner from Austria. It's not green at all. Instead it's a lovely thin golden colour.
Like most Veltliner it has a refreshing, sharp, dry but full taste. This one had a slight fizz to it as well.
I confess I chose it for the beautiful label. I adore that Jugendstil type-face and the charming folksy wood-cut illustration. Very Austrian.

Vin De Pays, Suisse

Swiss wine has appeared on this blog before, noting its quirky charm. But this refreshing little white vin de pays consumed on a Swiss Air flight back from Zurich after the Davos meeting proved that they can also do a very sensible and pleasing commercial blended tipple.

Taurasi: the taste of history

Taurasi is one of those little known Italian OCGs tucked away in the Campania region south of Rome. So it is a wine at the cross-roads of history. 

The Aglianico grape probably came from ancient Greece while the founding fathers of the main town were from imperial Rome. A Longobard castle shadows Taurasi which also saw the Allied forces sweep past in the Second World War.

The wine is a classy production that requires a minimum of three years maturation, one of which must be in wood.

This bottle from the Terredora producers has had a decade to reach what I think is near perfection for a moderate Taurasi. Imagine a Barolo heading towards a Montalcino Reserva.

The first taste can have a Burgundian edge but given time to open up it has wonderful flavours of dark red cherry.

Claret not blue

The weather's getting colder, the food is getting more substantial, and we're all getting into a more celebratory mood. In this season of snow, steak and Christmas trees, claret is the ideal wine. 

Claret is French, of course, but it has always been a favourite of the English, going right back to the happy times when we actually ran a large slice of the vineyard-packed south-west of France.

This Haut-Medoc from Chateau Tour Du Haut-Moulin has all the typical characteristics. Not a lot of fruit and the dry slightly mouldy tone may not be to everyone's taste. However, those spicy, woody aromas and the long, grape flavour works for me.

My claret-wearing football team may be bottom of the league this Christmas but after watching their hard-won draw at Blackburn I celebrated with few glasses of this Medoc. It's difficult not to feel things can only get better.

Go West!

When I think of Oregon I think of wagon trains about to tip off the west coast of America. But of course it's also host to some of the most sophisticated and pioneering new media folk in the world. So no surprise that this is a smooth, clever and rich wine.

I am a fan of Pinot Noir. Not to Sideways levels of fanaticism. But you will see from this blog that I enjoy its different manifestations according to climate and culture.

This one is velvety but with a lot of adjectives to follow: blackcurrant, warm, dry, full, deep but not too sweet. Perhaps not complex enough to be a classic but for a rounded and characterful drink. Well worth the wagon ride.

The Eiswein Cometh

The grapes for this sweet German Riesling are harvested early in the morning around Christmas when temperatures drop to as low as minus eight degrees near the Rhine in western Germany.

I love sweet pudding wines like Sauternes. But what is magical about this Eiswein is the combination of sweetness with a refreshing fruitiness that almost sparkles on the palate. Like ice.

Schloss Vollrads - glass stopped gold

This Rheingau Riesling was a beautiful colour - I described it as 'thin gold', my partner used the word 'urine'. 

As it says on the label this was dry. But it had a good grapey flavour. 

Oddly it has a glass stopper under the foil. What's that about?