Wine » France » Alsace

Simon Taylor with Balthazar Cornas 2001

Drinking with Stone, Vine and Sun

Being fairly new to the Winchester area it is good to make new friends. Consequently, on Monday night we enjoyed going the The Old Forge in Otterbourne to go drinking with Stone, Vine and Sun’s Simon Taylor and Gordon Coates. They are the local serious wine merchant and based upon what we enjoyed together I [...]


Mission 82, Mouton 89 and lovely Keithy P!

Lunch with Keith Prothero

This will be a brief report, but I hope to capture the brilliance of the occasion that was lunch with Keith Prothero. Not only is he a lovely fellow, but all his friends are too, and all share exquisite taste in food and drink. Best lunch I’ve had in ages – well done Nigel P-M [...]


Riesling Spatlese Graacher Domprobst 2002, Willi Schaefer

This Zind-Humbrecht tastes of shit

It is a Saturday, there is cricket on, Riesling is called for! Last time they were rather good, this time… deary me… Zind-Humbrecht wines, particularly the flasher Grand Crus, do strike me as being rather unstable beasts and so it is somewhat of a lottery ageing the blighters. These two bottles had been kept in [...]


Riesling Cuvee Frederic Emile Vendanges Tardives 1989, F. E. Trimbach

Glorious Alsace Riesling

I have long held Trimbach’s Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling in high regard. Indeed, the 1979 provided my seminal wine experience at the age of eight. My comment at the time was, “Wow, wine can taste of so many different things!” which I think is a pretty incisive analysis for a neophyte taster. I’ve had that [...]


Pinot Gris Vendanges Tardives Grand Cru Sommerberg 2006, Domaine Albert Boxler

I am celebrating with sugary wine!

Last week I got a call from my doctor with the results of a blood test. She told me I had diabetes and so needed to come in and discuss it. I was more than a little perturbed by this; as an ex-epidemiologist I am well aware how serious diabetes can be. Indeed, even today [...]


Gewurztraminer Grand Cru Brand 2008, Domaine Albert Boxler

Jean Boxler – is there no limit to this man’s vinous adroitness?

Whenever I have been lucky enough to taste chez Boxler it has always been the Rieslings that I have wanted to secure as my own. Consequently, when looking at the wines we purchased last summer I was rather surprised to see we had procured a six-pack of Grand Cru Brand Gewurztraminer. We buy Gewurztraminer vanishingly [...]


Edward Tully, Pol Roger Chardonnay 1995 and Holly the kitten

A few days drinking in Jersey part 1 – the whites

Last weekend we had the good fortune to visit the Tully family in Jersey. Whilst Edward Tully and I ran the Oxford University blind tasting team we tasted quite a lot of wine together; indeed, in one academic year over three thousand different ones. Student life was not always a trial. Our last trip to [...]


Gewurztraminer 2008, Albert Boxler

An unpretentious but distinctly drinkable Alsace Gewurztraminer

I am a rabidly enthusiastic janissary of Jean Boxler – his wines tweak my fun bits in royal style. That being said, I normally drink his Rieslings, and generally they are of a much flasher provenance than a humble generic. However, even if this is not at the quality zenith of Alsace wines, I’m rather [...]


Katie gets enthused about pizza

Burgundy from Meursault, Morey and Gevrey, an aged Beaujolais and knackered Alsace Riesling

Last night I had the great pleasure to visit my friends James and Katie in the company of recurrent drinking buddy ‘The Kid’ Peter for a comparative tasting of Clapham’s pizza establishments. As you can see, Katie gets rather enthusiastic about pizza. The Burgundies we opened were all wonderful, in an irksomely prejudice denying manner [...]


David brandishing a bottle of Riesling Cuvee Frederic Emile 2002 from Trimbach

Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling is an old favourite but this is rather mature

CFE was the first fine wine I tasted – when I was nine I tried the 1979 vintage and commented, “Wow, wine can taste of so many things.” So even back then my pronouncements on wine were correct. Given my decades of happy experiences with this wine I was rather enthused when it was intimated [...]

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