It doesn’t take much to make me want to open a good bottle of wine, but reminiscing about great bottles past is a sure fire way to make me grab a corkscrew and head down to the cellar. Mention of the bottle of 1992 Yalumba Octavius Shiraz that returned with me from Australia started me thinking that it was about time that I tried a bottle from the case of the 1996 vintage I bought ten or twelve years ago.
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I know it’s hard to believe, but this job isn’t always as glamorous as my writings would have you think. It’s not all plain sailing, you know. Only my dedication to the public service that is this blog enables me to cope with the good, the bad, and the ugly faces of the wine world with such impunity.
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Common wisdom states that you should never return to a past love, and so it was with a degree of trepidation that I opened a bottle of wine which I had tasted (and loved) only once before, almost twelve years ago to the day.
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Although today began pretty much like any other day, a fortuitous visit to Majestic on my way home from work for a couple of alarmingly premature Christmas presents jogged my memory about the significance of the date.
Any ideas? I’ll give you a clue. Today is the third Thursday in November.
Every year I think about buying a couple of cases of Bordeaux en primeur, but every year I always seem to have either just bought a case or two of something interesting or I find that I’ve just allocated my next few months’ wine allowance to several bottles of something I just can’t live without.
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An interesting one ce soir, a 2010 old vine Grenache Blanc by Domaine du Clos des Fées (14.5% ABV). I’ve been a big fan of this estate’s reds for ten years or more, but for some reason I never got round to trying its sole white. It always seemed rather pricey, even when Oddbins (R.I.P.) was interesting enough to stock it, and, at €18 from the cellar door, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d feel the same today.
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I need to preface this post by pointing out that it was my birthday, this was not exactly everyday fare! A half bottle of Dönnhoff’s Oberhäuser Brücke Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel 2003 (8.0% ABV) is a great way to start any evening, and tonight was no exception.
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It was Independence Day recently, although I had forgotten all about it until I sat down to write this (sorry Heather, I hope you had a good one!). Entirely by coincidence, I had been in an American state of mind the previous weekend, having collected some well-aged short ribs from the world’s greatest butcher.
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I like Malbec: it’s one of those grapes that, until quite recently, was rarely given the chance to spread its wings and fly solo. I like Argentinian wines: they tend to be more European in style than those from her neighbour across the Andes. A good Argentinian Malbec puts a smile on my face and a steak on my barbecue.
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