Tag: White

WSET Diploma

Butterscotch, pineapple, and toasted coconut: Château Carbonnieux Blanc Pessac-Léognan 2010

Posted on by Josh

Château Carbonnieux Blanc Pessac-Léognan 2010[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 3: Bordeaux]

White bordeaux lives in the shadow of its red parallels as well as its sweet counterparts: some consumers are unaware that Bordeaux even makes whites, which makes sense given the whole lucrative hubbub of the region for its reds. That being said, what’s in the market for whites can roughly be split into two camps: there are the more honeyed and oaked white Bordeaux where Sauvignon Blanc lays integrated within the tropical butterscotch, and then there are the modern blends dominated with Sauvignon Blanc which seem like responses to the popular gaudy styles from the new world. This wine lays deliciously in the former checkbox.

The wine is most definitely oaked, but without the buttery texture of a white Burgundy – it has upfront butterscotch and toasted coconut notes, but fruit is much more tropical and honeyed, and acidity is still on the high end.… read more

WSET Diploma

Liquid tarte tatin: 2005 Château de la Roulerie Coteaux du Layon Chaume

Posted on by Josh

2005 Château de la Roulerie Coteaux du Layon Chaume[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 2: Loire Valley]

The last wine of the evening was a beautiful deep gold, and you just absolutely knew this was going to be some luscious sweet thing that you’d just pretend to spit. What’s fantastic about Chenin Blanc is that it has this piercing acidity that’s present in many of the wines it produces – so even for a sweet and full-bodied wine like this, there’s still this cleansing quality that stabs through the syrup to keep it youthful and crisp, even for a 9-year-old wine. Such a fantastic balance between the acid, sugar, and fruit, along with a lingering finish. This was revealed as $30 at 500mL and one classmate started giggling in disbelief.… read more

WSET Diploma

Nectar marred by vintage: 2011 Domaine Huet “Le Mont” Vouvray Demi-Sec

Posted on by Josh

2011 Domaine Huet "Le Mont" Vouvray Demi-Sec[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 2: Loire Valley]

Beautiful golden colour upon pour. There was no doubt that this was Vouvray even before smelling it, since this was the 7th out of 8 wines we tried this day and we still haven’t bumped into a Chenin Blanc that had any residual sugar. I’m a big fan of (quality) sweeter Vouvray, where luscious sweet honeyed quince notes are balanced by high acidity. It’s another one of those wines you want to open for people who swear that sweet wines are the equivalent to Satan, or something.

Vouvray, if I’m correct, is the appellation in the Loire which plants the most Chenin Blanc, and the region produces the wine in all styles depending on the vintage – so sparkling, still, and sweet versions are all made.… read more

WSET Diploma

Wooly Bully: 2009 Domaine des Baumard “Clos Saint Yves” Savennières

Posted on by Josh

2009 Domaine des Baumard "Clos Saint Yves" Savennières[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 2: Loire Valley]

One of my wine friends convinced me to buy a Savennières for Thanksgiving. I was really on the fence on spending that much on a wine (school is expensive!), but through several points including celebration, treating myself because of my new certification, and Thanksgiving itself, I decided to go for it. And so I slowly nursed a bottle of 2007 Domaine des Baumard Trie Spéciale to myself on (Canadian) Thanksgiving. I’m sure no one else around me would have enjoyed a bottle that tasted like cream of mushroom and delicious wet winter sweaters.

Savennières is a small appellation in the northern part of Anjou, where dry and concentrated wines from Chenin Blanc are made.… read more

WSET Diploma

Bubble-less Champagne: 2010 Château de la Gravelle “Gorges” Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie

Posted on by Josh

2010 Château de la Gravelle "Gorges" Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 2: Loire Valley]

I’m straight up not the type of person to write home about Muscadet. The wine comes from the leftmost stretch of the Loire Valley in France, created by a neutral and fresh grape which can gain complexity from chilling on dead yeast cells, resulting in more texture and flavour. Its wines can often be bland and light on the nose with an old world monochrome template of mineral, green fruit, and hints of yeast. But the best examples, like in this wine, are much more expressive on the palate, with the yeasty, savoury, and bready components staging a complex dance on the tongue. You can tell that there’s much more texture which comes out in the viscosity and creaminess.… read more

WSET Diploma

The quietest Sancerre that ever was: 2012 Pascal Cotat “Les Monts Damnés” Sancerre

Posted on by Josh

2011 Pascal Cotat "Les Monts Damnés" Sancerre[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 2: Loire Valley]

The previous wine in this flight was a juicy and exuberant Loire Sauvignon Blanc. This second wine was the complete opposite, with super-restrained flavours hiding behind a shield of acid and maybe just a hint of texture. Everyone and I thought this was a Muscadet, which is a Loire wine made from the super-neutral Melon de Bourgogne grape. The grape is moulded into a textured and yeasty wine by processes involving storing the wine over fine lees (dead yeast cells), so all of it made sense, and almost everyone thought this was one of acceptable to good quality – lifeless but satisfactory.

So it turns out this was a 63-dollar wine from a well-reputed producer.… read more

WSET Diploma

Coteaux du who Sancerre what?: 2011 Henri Bourgeois “Terre de Fumée” Coteaux du Giennois

Posted on by Josh

2011 Henri Bourgeois "Terre de Fumée" Coteaux du Giennois

[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 2: Loire Valley]

Second sesh of Unit 3 and we get Sauv Blanc in the first of our flight again, and despite how obvious the grape can seem, I always seem to slip it up. I thought it was some really weird Muscadet at first – which is inherently neutral – but then I went back to this one after smelling the second wine and I shamefully crossed out my first guess.

Coteaux du Giennois is down there with Quincy, Reuilly, and Menetou-Salon as the forgotten hard-to-pronounce children of the Central Vineyards in the Loire, overshadowed by the better-known and much more fashionable Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé. Coteaux du Giennois is one of those extras you never think you’re gonna come across – so much that I didn’t bother taking notes on this area during my big Loire marathon last week – but hey: it turns out one or two of these wines exist in our market.… read more

Quaffing

Cream of Mushroom Wasabi: 2007 Domaine des Baumard Savennières Trie Speciale

Posted on by Josh

2007 Domaine des Baumard Savennières Trie SpecialeWasabi, out of all things, is the flavour benchmark that Master Sommelier Emily Wines gets out of Savennières. As if “earthy” and “mineral” weren’t strange enough to describe to people, we arrive at a wine that’s so weird – yet so classic – that it’s bound to split people in the middle like the burning tire and ash-scented South African Pinotage. Savennières is an appellation from the Loire Valley in France that produces dry, concentrated, and fundamentally non-fruity wines from Chenin Blanc, and Baumard makes exceptional and superlative examples described by Jancis Robinson as “a wine for intellectuals, not neophytes.” That’s the most shade I’ve ever seen anyone throw from within an encyclopedia.

It’s one of those wines that’s hard to put into words: so much, that it almost sounds disgusting on paper, but experiencing the wine – without sounding too ridiculous about it – really is sort of otherworldly.… read more

WSET Diploma

Thinking ’bout Gew: 2012 Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewurztraminer

Posted on by Josh

2012 Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Gewurztraminer[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3  – Week 1]

It’s often hard to forget grapes like Gewurztraminer. I adore how Oz Clarke describes the grape as wanting to “please everybody”, such that it dolls itself up: it’s voluptuous, perfumed, and heady. At times, it reminds me of either the quirky and suave fellow or the aunt who seems to only appear at those family gatherings and you know she’s just there because you can smell the perfume from miles away. That’s the classic Alsatian expression, of course, and there exist some leaner examples which are delicious but are almost disappointing when all you want are, according to Oz Clarke, “clouds of Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium, Calvin Klein’s Obsession and Giorgio of Beverley Hills to billow out before you, announcing the arrival of the one grape no one can resist.”… read more

WSET Diploma

“This bitch is definitely going to order a Pumpkin Spice Latte”: 2013 Bellingham “The Bernard Series” Vieilles Vignes Chenin Blanc

Posted on by Josh

2013 Bellingham "The Bernard Series" Vieilles Vignes Chenin Blanc[Tasted during WSET Diploma – Unit 3  – Week 1]

I’ve had this wine in class before. And then I had it in a restaurant forgetting that I had it in class before. And then I had it in class again – and I thought the wine was fantastic all three times. Besides the change from “Old Vines” to “Vieilles Vignes”, I’m stoked that my tasting notes were generally in the same camp. The first time around we were given 5 white wines to match with 5 different grape varieties so Chenin Blanc was basically a given, but this time around it was a little tougher.

I mean, you smell heavy oak and baked apple on the nose with that identical echo on the palate, and you immediately think new world oaked Chardonnay.… read more