Wine » Germany

Guy modeling a rather nice bottle of fizz

A supposedly sedate tasting

I scored a bunch of 2009 Mosel-Saar-Ruwer Riesling Kabinetts and I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast them. Peter was in Town so he came along as did first-time visitor to casa Strange Guy Dennis. He said he likes this site, which clearly marks him out as a chap of style and taste


Riesling Kabinett Eitelsbacher Karthauserhofberg 2009, Karthauserhof

Livid, thrilling Riesling

When I tried the 2009s at Howard Ripley’s tasting this stood out as being a top wine. I had forgotten I had already purchased a bottle from the Wine Society for speculative tasting purposes. What a good purchase it was, this wine is just fantastic.

In very ripe vintages like 2009, the lesser quality-level wines can often provide the highest quality/price ratio for the careful buyer


Riesling Auslese Piesporter Goldtropfchen 2006, Reinhold Haart

Golden of colour and sweet to the taste

Goldtropfchen is a brilliant vineyard, but until relatively recently no one has been exploiting it to its full potential. When you taste a golden-hued, deliciously fruity wine like this you can see that top wines can be made and so applaud Reinhold Haart for the efforts he has gone to and shout “Shame!” at all those other producers who are wasting their patches of this great vineyard.

As an aside,


Weingut Willi Schaefer with the vineyards of Graach

Totally beautiful Rieslings

When Willi Schaefer replied in the affirmative to my email asking for a tasting I could have kissed my computer screen. His wines never fail to have me moaning and sighing with uncontrolled ecstasy; I love them unreservedly and so trying some in the company of the man himself promised to be an oenological treat of the highest order


David outside Muller-Catoir

A happy re-acquaintance

When I was a student at Oxford I used to buy plenty of Muller-Catoir wines, so many that the wine merchant put neck labels on the bottles saying “David Strange highly recommends this wine”


Ready to dine

Lunchtime drinking with Mac Forbes

Lunch yesterday was a real treat for the Elitistreview team. Not only because we were dining at Hawksmoor, London’s best meat restaurant, nor due to the array of ambrosial wines we had to ingurgitate, but most definitely because we were dining with our favourite Australian winemaker, the distinctly charming Mac Forbes, and his delightful UK agents


Karthauserhof

German 2009s courtesy of Howard Ripley

It was a great treat to spend the morning tasting through a range of German 2009 wines, so many thanks to Sebastian Thomas of Howard Ripley for inviting me along. There are clearly some mind-twistingly good wines from this vintage, but not all of them are models of perfect harmony.

If you’ve never tasted German Rieslings at this stage in their development let me assure you it is not quite


Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese Escherndorfer Lump 2001, Horst Sauer, with Katie looking ravishing in the background

I rather liked the ham

We dropped by our lovely friends, James and Katie, for dinner; the ham was brilliant. The wines were decidedly good too, apart from a totally knackered bottle I brought along. Thanks for hosting us, J&K!

Chablis Grand Cru Preuses 2004, William Fevre

This was a bit cold to start with and so not terribly eloquent (serving quality Chardonnay at fridge temperature is an improvident use of wine), but as it is


Jeffs40atHawksmoorl

General drinking for Non-Stinky Jeff’s birthday!

It seems Hawksmoor is our favourite restaurant in London at the moment; it is certainly London’s best meat restaurant. They indubitably delivered the goods when celebrating Non-Stinky Jeff’s birthday, providing wonderful bits of grilled animal. I recommend Tamworth belly ribs followed by a hilariously rare sirloin steak with two fried eggs, bone marrow and macaroni cheese


Fine wine, fine food and fine company

Last week a select few of the wine taster illuminati who were at Oxford contemporaneously with me travelled from far-flung corners of the world to meet at Hawksmoor for quality meat, fine wine and, it seemed, a rather large amount of discussion about being a father to a young child

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