Babylonstoren has the second most visited gardens in the western cape and some of the most delicious wines there. I’ve been to the gardens and met the wine maker and cellar master, very nice guys and so knowledgeable.
If you look at my London wine fair blog from May 2019 you’ll find some of their reds .
This is their 2018 Mourvedre rose wine. Its fruit driven dry rose with aromas and flavours of strawberry, red berries and a clean fresh taste. It has more flavour than a Provence rose and that’s not bad. Those extra flavours make it so drinkerable.
At £13 a bottle it’s a little pricy but you get what you pay for and no it doesn’t go with strawberries and cream scones, swooped out for Demi Sec sparkling from Vouvray pretty quickly and then drunk later.
Puglia in the heel of Italy is more famous for its red fruity wine which is low in tannins, soft and easy drinking. This is the rose equivalent.
The first impression is that this is very Provence in style, a little more colour but just a shade darker. You don’t get a lot of aroma, subtle hints of strawberry and redcurrant with a little blossom. The flavours are again subtle with the red fruits and a fresh finish, youthful and light.
At about £10 a bottle it competes with Provence’s rose’s and holds its own. For the summer it’s perfect evening garden wine watching the sunset.
Masseria Pietrosa Primitivo Rosato, Puglia in Italy
Each year we invite a few winemakers and people in the wine industry for a bit of food, drink.and possibly intelligent conversation, or at least conversation! In past years this has included people from the Decanter magazine, winemakers and wine sellers. Usually we have some English wine, unusual wine, weird wine and crackingly good wine. This evening was no different. Above are the wines drunk. For food we had tapas style food, breads, pates, fish, meat and cheese selections.
Going from left to right we started with Mexican sparkling wine made with Macabeu (a spanish grape), Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. A little sweet for my taste but more of the Macabeu grape character coming through. It got a bronze medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards. Next was Bethnal Bubbles from a winery in Bethnal Green, east end of London. Some said weird, I said “oooohhhhh, it’s weird” unfiltered sparkling with a hoppy taste and green apple notes. At £23 a bottle it’s a good party conversation piece but not one I’ll get.
Then we went through some English white wines, light and fruity with lots of citrus. The Toppesfield vineyard 2018 Bacchus was excellent, I tried it just after bottling and thought they over extracted, a few months on and the wine is tasting much better with much more fruit. The Ashdown Estate from Bluebell vineyard white was lighter but very drinkable.
The Alsace Schlumberger Grand Cru 2014 Riesling. Full rich flavours of citrus, peach, lychee and a smell of petroleum, magnificent. Burnt Foot Pinot Noir rose followed. Good red fruit flavours and one of the better Pinot Noir wines from the UK.
Next was King Coel red, 20 year old English red that tasted fresh and had vibrant red fruit flavours. For me the highlight as it was under the winemakers stairs for much of that time, please see the blog for a write up. The Potash vineyard red was only 7 years old! but had lost some of its fruit flavours, drinkable but one wine to slip and not knock back, so to enjoy the flavours. A South Africa red followed, Lemberg-Louis 2016 made with Shiraz, Mourvedre and Granache, richer red fruit flavours with black cherry and higher tannins, excellent with the meat course.
The last wines were 2 late bottle vintage ports, grahams 2005 and Quinta Sta Eufemia 2019, both excellent ruby ports with rich fruit and smooth finish were drunk with the cheese course and on their own and finally we had a Czech desert wine, Pechor Vinarstvi 2015 Ryzlink Rynsky, light and full of citrus flavour.
The next afternoon the ones that stayed and had a midd BBQ felt the long night!
This weekend I meet up with one of the finest wine makers in the country, possibly the world.
Mary Mudd was the owner of what is now Dedham Vale vineyard, was Carter’s vineyard untill 2001. Made with mainly the Rondo grape with a bit of Dunkelfelder and Dornfelder this was one of her last vintages. Stored under her stairs for nearly all of that time it was soft in texture with a hint of tannins. A chunk of red fruit and still after all that time quite wonderful. The fact that 20 years on it was so drinkerable is a testament to her skill as a wine maker and that great wine can be made in the UK.
We recently went on a Wine GB trip to the Loire Valley and visited Bouvet Ladubay in Saumur. It’s big operation making 6 million bottles of wine per year.
This is their standard sparkling wine, very dry with flavours of citrus and green apple. The acidity is high and would naturally pair with sea food or a second glass. This is the standard I measure other sparkling wine against. It’s not the very best but very good. Majestic Wines sell this for about £10 a bottle, good value.
Bouvet Ladubay Brut from Saumur in the Loire Valley, France
Lawson Dry Hills Sauvignon Blanc was a favourite of ours at one stage. It was one of the the better New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs but like many times we got distracted by the next wine and forgot it. The reserve is even better with aromas and flavours of citrus, ripe apple, peach and gooseberry. It has the usual high acidity but its subtle for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, more french style but with more lemon notes. Normally you would pair this with sea food but it went very well with a vegetable stir-fry. At £15 a bottle it’s in the Greywacke price band but I think it holds its own against that iconic wine.
Lawson Dry Hills Reserve Sauvignon Blanc – New Zealand
Lawson Dry Hills Reserve Sauvignon Blanc and vegetable stir-fry
Read the back of the bottle and it gives you the usual blurb on what it goes with, fish, rice, pasta, tapas, scrambled eggs! Therefore I would conclude that this wine should actually be drunk for breakfast. I therefore the thought what else would this go with.
Never let It be said that I did not do a serious review. Yes you get the usual aromas and flavours honeysuckle and and lemon with the feeling of high acidity. As a 2015 vintage this is a really deep golden colour with a stronger flavour that you’d get with the age over a younger albarino. But the real question is does this go with cadburys caramel buttons? The sweetness of the caramel is high and is picked up with honey notes from the wine, when both are cold it’s a really nice combination, the other one you could try is an cold chardonnay with cadbury’s milk chocolate and suck the milk chocolate while drinking the wine.
La trucha 2015 Albarino tasting with caramel buttons
Alban Foucher is the 3rd generation wine maker at Earl Goucher in Saumur. The La Seigneurie 2017 is a consumer wine. 40,000 bottles are produced and at Eur10 it’s a decent example of a Cab Franc drink now wine. You get the usual red fruit aroma and flavour but also a decent hit of tannins. It’s not a smooth, silky wine but with a lump of meat or tomato based pasta dish it’s pretty good. Personal I prefer less tannins.
Clos Moleton 2015 from Saumur, Loire Valley, France is one of the better reds from the region. An organic vineyard that produces fine wine made from Cab Franc. There are aromas of red fruit with spice. Flavours of red fruit, black cherry, pepper and a slight flavour of vanilla make this a wonderful red. At about £20 it’s good value.
4 years ago we came across a little producer south of Saumur. Antoine Butet from Domaine De La Bruyere. Last time we met his father, this time we met the son, Antoine who is the. winemaker The wines were crisp, clear with lovely taste of green fruit and pear flavours for the whites and subtle red fruit tastes, low tannins and easy drinking for the reds. We call him the shed guy because he literally works out of a shed, what looks like an old converted cow shed.
This may not be gold medal winning decanter wine, but it’s fantastic value at Eur4 or Eur5 a bottle and it will not embarrass you if you serve to friends, exactly what wine should be. Ps he also does 10 litre wine in a bag.
