Rhonea, Notre Dame des Vignes, Visan, 2020, Rhone, France
This is a typical Rhone style red wine made with the Grenache and Syrah grapes. It has depth and length, its dry with good balance acidity and lots of black fruit flavours with hints of Violet and the smackering of pepper. At £10 a bottle is excellent value
Another classy roundabout
Chablis map of the different grades of land
In July 2023 we headed off to Champagne and Chablis with friends for a bit of wine tasting. Weather was decent, accommodation booked Nd tastings arranged. Some of the champagne and Chablis houses needed to booked or an introduction made by a friendly Master of Wine, whom the wife had been judging wine earlier in the year.
What was apparent by the end of the trip was the quality of the Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines and price was pretty fair considering the quality.
Champagne Guilleminot.
Excellent start to the tasting and at about £15 a bottle for the entry Bruts, great price. Good length and fresher style these were a move away from the heavy toasty and yeasty notes of your traditional Champagnes. Well worth trying if you prefer cremant sparkling wines but want the next step up.
Champagne Jeangout.
This smaller producer is another excellent champagne house making about 30,000 bottles a year. Fresher style again with crispness, freshness and subtle citrus flavours that made their Premier Cru stand out. At £23 a bottle not cheap, even by french standards but superb and worth the money.
Champagne Cattier.
Cattier was not a name I had heard of before the wife brought a bottle home to go with our Christmas day meal, but then make about 600,000 bottles of their range and 1 million bottles of the iconic Ace of Spades range, at £300 a bottle the Ace of Spades if seriously expensive. At £30 to £50 a bottle their main range is more affordable and great quality. Fresher than your usual Champagnes but with clarity and superb length these Premier Cru’s are classy. Their 2014 Vintage has a bit more traditional characteristics but the fruit is certainly there.
One very geeky fact is that they are putting NFC labels on their bottles very shortly, hold your NFC enabled phone next to the front label and it will open a Utube video that Cattier has produced. Thd video is pretty good too. Here we has a tour of their cellars, mind blowing, 3 levels and stretch for what seemed like miles.
La Chablisiene.
This is a large producer with a large range of Petit Chablis to Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines. The Petit Chablis was a bit disappointing, short on length and flavours. Their Premier Cru wines were very good though and we end up with 9 different Premier Cru bottles.
Domaine Gautheron.
Great range and excellent at all levels. Fresh, crisp and loads of citrus. The Petit Chablis was a great day to day wine and the Premier Cru were wonderful ‘occasion’ wines the Grand Cru we purchased will be laid down for the next decade.
Domaine Vrignaud Fourchaume.
Classy cellar room for the tastings matched the wine. Oozing quality over their entire range we probably should have purchased more than we did. At about £20 a bottle for their Premier Cru wines this matched the other producers but their were none I didn’t think deserved a silver or gold medal.
Aluado, Alicante Bouschet, 2021, Portugal
Thus is one of fruitiest wines I have tasted this year with huge amounts of black fruit with a velvet texture. It’s a bit like Ribena for adults which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but the structure and finess is lacking. At £11 a bottle it’s not an outrageous price but there are better fruitier wines under £10.
Esk Valley, Rosé, 2020, New Zealand
This is one of the best rose wines I have tasted this year and best of all its under £10 a bottle. Its dry, light with good length and decent flavours of strawberries and redcurrant.
It’s the perfect summer rose that you can drink without a hefty price tag.
Prosper Maufoux, Puligny-Montrachet, 1er Cru, La Garenne 2018, Burgundy, France
This Chardonnay from Prosper Maufoux, Premier Cru, in Burgundy, France is a great example of an amazing wine, one that all should try but at £100+ a bottle very few will. Its dry with great length and balanced acidity. Lots of stone fruit and a softness that coats the whole mouth, truly superb.
Bellingham, Pinotage, 2019, South Africa
Bellingham make good solid wines at sensible prices and this Pinotage is spot on. Dry, with firm tannins and decent length it has plenty of red fruit with oak, tobacco and hints of leather. It’s no gold medal winner but at £10 a bottle it’s excellent value.
Rinomata Cantina, Tombacco, Rosso Piceno, 2020, Italy
Madd with Montepulciano and Sangiovese grapes with red wine from Tombacco in central Italy is just great. Reasonable bold, dry but with lots of black and red fruit flavours and aromas. There are underlying notes of chocolate and tobacco and our earthiness which is very very subtle it makes this wine superb to go with red meat or to sip on its own. At £12 a bottle it’s excellent value
Brampton Estate, Roxton, 2018, South Africa
I visited Brampton vineyard many years ago and found it to have excellent wines and port. This red blend is no exception for me it’s a crackling red wine. Dry, with solid body and tannins and good length this has flavours of red and black fruits, leather, oak, vanilla and hints of chocolate and tobacco.
The down side is the price at £17 a bottle, not outrageous but not your everyday wine.
Cloudy Bay, Pelorus, Sparkling Rosé, New Zealand
New Zealand sparkling wine has come a long way in the last decade, just like New Zealand wine in general and this sparkling from Cloudy Bay is half decent. Its not perfect and a bit pricey but drinkable. There’s plenty of acidity and tartness but the fruit is lacking with just hints of strawberries and redcurrant. At £25 a bottle there are better Rosé sparkling wines out there.
Domaine de la Potardiere, Muscadet Sevre et Maine, 2019, Loire, France
Loire wines are often decent value and high quality and this one from Domaine de la Potardiere is an excellent example. Being a Muscadet Sevre et Maine you get a dry, richly valued white wine with ripe citrus, pineapple, peach, honey notes and sense that this could be a standard to judge others by.
At £15 a bottle it’s great value and not one to just guzzle