Pieroth Serdinand
2010 Cabernet Sauvingnon and Merlot Murfatlar
DOC CIB Romania 11%
This is one of those wine club best sellers and it was the last bottle under our couch, a traditional Romanian bortrytised red. I got excited because I love bortrytis wine but have never had a red variety.
I don't know if it was because it was cold, or it's the wine, but I didn't much on the nose. I had to stick my face into the glass. Some red dark fruit like plums and cherries, and what I describe as 'clag glue', a sort of musky-plasticky-blandness.
In the mouth it's sweet and sugary like grape juice. There is a general 'red fruitiness', as well as stewed prunes and figs, brown sugar and plum jam. The porty-ness of it is nice, and it's definitely easy drinking, and the low alcohol content means even though you chug it, it won't get you smashed immediately like some closer to the 14.5% mark.
We had it with a fish curry and the sweetness of it stood up well against the spices of the food. It kind of reminds me of sangria so it might be very nice made in to one of those.
All in all, a nice wine, not extraordinary as I had hoped, but... nice.
Next blog: review of 1st DOA book- Neverland by Neil Gaiman
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
La Prade Mari
This blog won't all be about France, I promise. However I did want to share the best rose I've tried.
It was a very hot, dry day and Nic and I were travelling around the town of Minerve, which produces the appellation Minervois. It was just after one in the afternoon and we realised any cellar door merchants would be closed for lunch. A great habit to have! This is how the French are so relaxed, I believe. We drove into this tiny vineyard and parked next to the cellar door, planning to have a look around. The next thing we knew, this stinky, scruffy guy with messed-up hair, sweating profusely, half asleep, jerks the wooden doors open.
Us: Ahh, hi! Bonjour!
DrunkenFrench Guy: Eeergh? Englese??!
Us: Australian. No Englese *shaking heads and making no no no hand gestures*
Dfg: ah. ughxgsydhfkbl#/^* in French.
Us: ah, *getting visual phasebook* degustation silvuplaayyt?*
Dfg: oui oui le vin!
and he pulled us inside.
We sat at the little bar and did a tasting, sam as anywhere, but with pointing to pictures of fruit in our little book. " le fraise!" "oui, le fraise!" and much smiling.
The vigneron tried to explain his biodynamic principles (fortunately the word is the same in English) and we decided that this wine took its deeper colour from that.
We got a couple of bottles, including this one drunk in 2012: (#the presence of tannin was unusual in a rose but gave the wine some fantastic depth. Yumm.
Domaine LaPrade Mari
AOC Minervois Rose 2011
Syrah 60% Mouvedre 20 % Grenache 20%
Deep red
Clean
On the nose:
strawberry jam
rhubarb
red cherry
palate:
dry
medium to high acid
low tannin#
medium body
red cherry
strawberry jam
slight raspberry
It was a very hot, dry day and Nic and I were travelling around the town of Minerve, which produces the appellation Minervois. It was just after one in the afternoon and we realised any cellar door merchants would be closed for lunch. A great habit to have! This is how the French are so relaxed, I believe. We drove into this tiny vineyard and parked next to the cellar door, planning to have a look around. The next thing we knew, this stinky, scruffy guy with messed-up hair, sweating profusely, half asleep, jerks the wooden doors open.
Us: Ahh, hi! Bonjour!
DrunkenFrench Guy: Eeergh? Englese??!
Us: Australian. No Englese *shaking heads and making no no no hand gestures*
Dfg: ah. ughxgsydhfkbl#/^* in French.
Us: ah, *getting visual phasebook* degustation silvuplaayyt?*
Dfg: oui oui le vin!
and he pulled us inside.
We sat at the little bar and did a tasting, sam as anywhere, but with pointing to pictures of fruit in our little book. " le fraise!" "oui, le fraise!" and much smiling.
The vigneron tried to explain his biodynamic principles (fortunately the word is the same in English) and we decided that this wine took its deeper colour from that.
We got a couple of bottles, including this one drunk in 2012: (#the presence of tannin was unusual in a rose but gave the wine some fantastic depth. Yumm.
Domaine LaPrade Mari
AOC Minervois Rose 2011
Syrah 60% Mouvedre 20 % Grenache 20%
Deep red
Clean
On the nose:
strawberry jam
rhubarb
red cherry
palate:
dry
medium to high acid
low tannin#
medium body
red cherry
strawberry jam
slight raspberry
How Hemingway Ruined Paris
When I was young, I read 'A Moveable Feast' by Ernest Hemingway. And what an impression it had upon my romantic soul. To me, as I'm sure to many, Paris became this ideal. A wonderous, magestical place where starving writers went to the Lourve to feed on what they saw and be satisfied with a few mandarines. A place where one could stroll in the Tourilise Gardens quite alone with one's thoughts. Where one could spend an afternoon over a cafe creme writing, or reading. I was so excited to go to Paris. Sure, I knew it would have changed a lot since the early 20th Century. But its appeal was still there, right?
So, after driving around regional France camping and tasting vin with my fiance, we unloaded our stuff in our modest single room in a hostel in Montmartre. Probably our first mistake. Known as the home of the Moulin Rouge, it attracts millions of tourists each year, and is about as seedy as you can get. Our first night there, we had a disagreement and I ended up singing Natalie Imbruglia's Torn in a karaoke bar and having flirty conversations with the host about my phrasebook in bad French before stumbling up the rapey looking lanes to find the hostel. Not a great start.
The Lourve is closed on Tuesdays but they still let you in to the shopping mall ( goody), where the loo costs 3 euros and they have fancy toilet paper for sale. By the river tourists swarm and our plan for a quiet romantic picnic complete with Vireclesse were twarted by dumbshits taking photos of us. The ' real ' Paris. Puh! And some bitch of a lady screamed at me when I took a picture. I'll upload it. Hah!! "Take that, Frenchy! Chowder!"
We never found Shakespeares Books but I'm sure it would be disappointing, and the Eiffel tower and Arc- couldn't get a photo without a trillion people in it. Don't get me wrong, I understand large cities are all the same. But really, I thought we might have got a decent glass of wine, coffee or authentic French food somewhere. Alas. Poor Hem.
That said, we loved the Loire, Bergundy, Languedoc, Rhone and Champagne. Cellar door prices!! Woo!
So, after driving around regional France camping and tasting vin with my fiance, we unloaded our stuff in our modest single room in a hostel in Montmartre. Probably our first mistake. Known as the home of the Moulin Rouge, it attracts millions of tourists each year, and is about as seedy as you can get. Our first night there, we had a disagreement and I ended up singing Natalie Imbruglia's Torn in a karaoke bar and having flirty conversations with the host about my phrasebook in bad French before stumbling up the rapey looking lanes to find the hostel. Not a great start.
The Lourve is closed on Tuesdays but they still let you in to the shopping mall ( goody), where the loo costs 3 euros and they have fancy toilet paper for sale. By the river tourists swarm and our plan for a quiet romantic picnic complete with Vireclesse were twarted by dumbshits taking photos of us. The ' real ' Paris. Puh! And some bitch of a lady screamed at me when I took a picture. I'll upload it. Hah!! "Take that, Frenchy! Chowder!"
We never found Shakespeares Books but I'm sure it would be disappointing, and the Eiffel tower and Arc- couldn't get a photo without a trillion people in it. Don't get me wrong, I understand large cities are all the same. But really, I thought we might have got a decent glass of wine, coffee or authentic French food somewhere. Alas. Poor Hem.
That said, we loved the Loire, Bergundy, Languedoc, Rhone and Champagne. Cellar door prices!! Woo!
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