Vinosseur.com

The Wine:

Clemens Busch Pündricher Marienburg Riesling Spätlese Trocken 2004 ***

Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany

12.5% Alcohol

7.4 grams/liter residual sugar

Residual Acidity N/A

Price in Norwegian Kroner 217,- ($31.75)

Wine pairing by Vinosseur

The Food:

Citrus and Soy cured halibut

Soy crutons

Lemon Grass foam

Baby chives

Cured halibut by Jacob's

The wine:

Georg Breuer Spätburgunder 2005

Rheingau, link Germany

100% Pinot Noir

13% Alcohol

0.5 grams/liter residual sugar

Residual acidity N/A

Price in Norwegian Kroner:  186,-

Wine pairing by Vinosseur

The Food:

Gourmet pizza topped with

Thinly sliced fresh figs

Orange marinated fresh fennel

Dried cranberries

Manchego cheese

Thinly sliced duck breast

(No sauce on homemade pizza dough!)

Gourmet Pizza by Vinosseur

The wine:

Vinhos Barbeito Boal 1863

Madeira, ed Portugal

100% Boal

Aged 130 years in barrels

19.5% Alcohol

The food:

“Fyrstekake” Norwegian Royalty Cake

Main ingredients: Flour, buy eggs, sugar, butter

almonds and in this particular version – chocolate

to help match the Madeira

Yum!

The wine:

Strohmeier Ganz á Siassa Schilcher Beerenauslese 2007

Weststeiermark, adiposity Austria

100% Blauer Wildbacher

10.5% Alcohol

140 grams/liter residual sugar

12.7 grams/liter residual acidity

Price in Norwegian Kroner: (37, for sale 5cl)   249, healing –

Wine pairing by Vinosseur

The food:

Valrhona Chocolate Savarin

Blood orange mousse and foam

Strohmeier caramelized pear topped with

Strohmeier  caramelized oatmeal and estragon leaf

Pear Sorbet

Blood orange caramel for decoration

Dessert by Petter Beyer

Date tasted: 3rd March, 2009

Wow!

I surprised my small group of friends (and myself!) on one of our “gourmet pizza” evenings by pulling this wine out of my cellar.  I didn’t tell the small group of 5 what it was I was surprising them with to see if they could identify the country of origin, variety and “guesstimate” the vintage… I was not surprised when they had difficulties with this blind tasting as I was a bit surprised by the vitality of the wine considering the age. Also unexpected was the bouquet which emerged from the glass.

The first thing that I have to reiterate is that I not only pulled the wine from my cellar, but I also opened and served the wine at cellar temperature. A perfect 13 degrees Celsius (55.5 degrees Fahrenheit). After pulling the cork, which was in excellent shape, and some wine was poured into the glasses, what emerged from the glass was a massive herbal bouquet!
Anyway, back to the color for a moment. Yellow, but quite light in color actually. Surprised all of us that the wine was 20 years old. Looked more like a 10-year old wine in the glass. (Flash was used for this photo – which doesn’t really reflect the true hue of the wine, sorry!)

Ok, now back to the bouquet! Slight petrol/sulfur hints which burnt off after some time in the glass, but always present were these amazing aromas of spearmint and Thai basil with hints of “minerality”!! We all agreed that the Thai basil was dominant along with other herbs. Very interesting.
ON the palate, this Auslese wine with an 8.5% alcohol content, was almost completely dry after 20 years as you might imagine, but there was a mild sweetness at the front end when the wine first hit the tongue, but it quickly gave way to a very elegant but high level of acidity. Much more elegant in fact that many of the Karthaüser’s I have tasted in the past. Oh, of course, on the palate there were plenty of ripe lemons and a splash of kumkwat.. The wine was very concentrated and the finish very long.

A very nice wine for drinking today. If you own this wine, I would enjoy it now even though I feel it still had some cellar life left.. But why wait, drink it! This wine is exactly the reason that I am in love with the Riesling!!

I found the most amazing written definition of terroir (thank Jamie Goode on Twitter for this one!)

When I took my final exam(s) for the sommelier education last year, the very first question on the written portion of the exam was “explain terroir”. I wrote about 3 pages on what I felt terroir was, so I am reasonably opinionated on this question.

In Thor Iverson’s blog post “Somewhere, a place for us”, he explains terroir so thoroughly that I had to provide the link to his post here in my blog for my frinds to read. It is extremely well-written, concise and I think nails it. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

So, here is the link to “Somewhere, a place for us”

Hello!

Here I am uploading another video! My confidence and overall video quality is still not where I want them to be. I appreciate your continued support as I continuously work on improving these videos! Enjoy

Wine Tasting with Vinosseur – Bründlmayer Grüner Veltliner Kamptaler Terrassen 2007 from vinosseur on Vimeo.

Date tasted: 28th February, 2009

Last night I had the great opportunity to taste an unusual wine. A wine that I had personally purchased for the wine list of the wine bar I used to manage. I remember buying 4 bottles of this wine around 3 years ago after discovering how unusual it was. It was a great opportunity that I couldn’t pass up!
The Robert Chevillon Domaine farms around 13HA, most of which are in Nuits-Saint-Georges. The vineyards include 8 Premier Crus. Most of his vines are 25-40 years old, and some are almost 80 years old.

Robert makes around 1,000 bottles of this rare Nuits-Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes Blanc, the subject of this tasting. The wine is made from  a mutated white Pinot Noir grape known locally as ‘pinot gouges’.  Here’s a brief paragraph borrowed from The Burgundy Report:

“Pinot & Mutation – Growers have known for generations that planting the same stock (clone) in different vineyards often ends up with vines that are somehow different, we’re not talking about micro-climate specifics such as ripening and how vigorous the vines might be, but also about the shape and growing habits of the vines. The growers feel that the vine somehow adapts itself to the location. There is also a more spontaneous change that can happen, just one branch of a vine may suddenly produce only ‘white’ grapes. This mutation is believed to have been the source of pinot blanc and pinot beurot (gris): A perfect example of this was the similar mutation of vine in Nuits St.Georges in the 1930’s from which cuttings were separated and planted in their own right. These white grapes are now known locally as ‘pinot gouges’, after the domain that found, planted and still exploits them – other sources call it pinot musigny. From a DNA perspective, beurot, blanc and gouges are to all intents and purposes the same as pinot noir.”

The first two bottles seemed to be corked (unfortunately), but the third seemed just fine. The wine was decanted immediately and consumed at around 14-15 degrees Celsius (57-60 Fahrenheit). This is a perfect temperature to begin consuming most white wine, not at the 8-10 (48-50 Fahrenheit) degrees most people drink their white wine!  In fact, the wine only improved as it warmed, as do many white wines and Champagnes.

Here are my tasting notes:

The color was quite a dark golden yellow with maturity evident.

The nose initially reminded me of some of the wines I had experienced from the Jura. In other words, immediately evident were aromas of oak and what reminded me of yeast or flor. It was rather difficult at this point to pickup on the fruit. Now I know that there have been issues with the premature oxidation of (white) Burgundies in the mid to late 90’s and perhaps this was another example of a Burgundy with premature oxidation, but that aroma that I can only describe as flor seemed to burn off a bit after some time in the glass so perhaps this is the way the wine was supposed to be.

The wine’s aroma was not not very complex initially, but eventually the aromas of flor and oak gave way to red apples, like one might find in a Blanc de Noirs from the Champagne region, and hints of orange peel and citrus. There were also mineral hints laying in the background. That smell of flor never fully subsided, but did soften over time.

On the palate, the wine was very concentrated and mineral with yellow apples, not red as was present on the nose. Medium weight with very good acidity for a wine of this age. I would rate the acidity at medium plus. The wine reminded me a bit of a Chardonnay, but with less weight and not as oily or fat. At first the 13% alcohol was quite evident, but began to integrate itself about 30 minutes after the bottle was decanted. The finish was very long at around 30-40 seconds.

My overall impression was that this was most likely a good bottle and was displaying the characteristics that it should. The wine was well made and could have even been stored for another 4-7 years in my opinion. To sum up, this was an interesting wine to taste, but not one that will keep me up at night thinking as many red Burgundies do.

If you have had the opportunity to taste this wine or a similar wine, it would be interesting to hear your feedback.

The vineyards:

Rheingau, Germany

Pfalz, Germany

The grapes:

healthy grapes

healthy grapes

Botrytis Cinerea - noble rot

Botrytis Cinerea - noble rot

The glorious wine:

Dr. Bürklin-Wolf, Pfalz

Georg Breuer, Rheingau

Leitz, Rheingau

Geltz Zilliken, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer

…and the winner is (in case you didn’t guess):

Riesling.

From bone dry to sweet.

When well made, is always a treat.