New Wine List available shortly!

Helen Brotherton — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:47:32 +0000

In the next few days you’ll start to see a few changes creep onto the FWW site, not least of which is a fully revamped wine list. After a few jaunts around the country earlier this year we find ourselves with an expanded portfolio of Distributorships and have been appointed agents for two French wineries to represent them in the Alpes – Martimes. There are a few old friends we’ll be sticking with – new vintages plus a few range extensions, but we are most proud to now be working closely with both Château des Chaberts in the Var and Domaine de Mourchon in the Southern Rhône village of Séguret.

There is so much more to Provence than simple quaffing Rosé so we’ve opted to list Chaberts most premium range – a red, white and a rosé all at 17.75€, that all have a full trophy cupboard of awards and medals and offer real class and complexity. Betty Cundall, who runs Château des Chaberts, will admit she is fiercely proud of the Chaberts rouge and is delighted we will be giving it a high profile this Summer at our tastings and events. Also, although we have been championing our fabulous range of Vilmart champagnes since early 2009, we do recognise that there are some fun party occasions where you need something a little frothier and less serious. Chaberts happen to do a traditional method Provence rosé sparkler in a most glamorous frosted bottle for a fantastic 12.60€. Made in exactly the same way as champagne but using local Provence varietals, serve well chilled at around 6 – 8?C and enjoy passion-fruit, raspberries and roses in a glass!

Over to the Rhône and the Estate we used for our Grape Escape tour, the fabulous Domaine de Mourchon for warm hearted juicy Grenache and Syrah based stunners. We’ve listed their luscious rosé “Loubie” at 7.25€ (something a bit more intense and punchy than our delicate Provence flowers), their eminently quaffable “Tradition” at 8.75€, a Côtes du Rhône – Villages – peppery, packed with berry fruit and smooth as silk, and their incredibly dense and brambly Grande Réserve at 15.00€. As a special introduction to our new list, we are offering a case of 12 of the superb 2006 Grande Réserve for the price of 11 bottles, representing a saving of 1.25€ per bottle! Amongst other projects with the McKinlay family at Domaine de Mourchon, we are working on developing a trio of wines to package specially for Nice Rugby Club for their next season – we’ll keep you posted as we progress.

Reading this, you’d think our wine list was all French – but think again! We really enjoy setting ourselves the challenge of sourcing non French wine here in France. I believe French customs officers think we are a bit bonkers when we go to them with various paperwork to import wines from other countries – “surely we ‘ave enough wine ‘ere??” But scour the globe we do, and the list now has wines from New Zealand, Chile, Germany, California, Spain and much more. We are particularly looking forward to sharing Delta Vineyards exquisite strawberry scented Pinot Noir from Marlborough (19.50€) with you and introducing you to the wonders of the grape variety Alvarinho from Vinho Verde DO in Portugal (16.00€) – the most perfect seafood wine ever. Also, banish memories of sickly Liebfraumilch which has done so much damage to Germany’s image in the wine world – we have two of Ernie Loosens wondrous Rieslings from the Mosel to tempt you – a spine-tingly yummy Kabinett from the Erdener Treppchen vineyard that is all apples and honey at (14.75€) and heavenly, spicy nectarine filled ethereally enchanting Ürziger Würzgarten Spätlese (18.75€)

On the whole, we have chosen just a couple of wines to star on our list, but we can usually get other wines from the same producers – just ask. The list itself also has Food Matching suggestions and full descriptions of what to expect from each wine. Also new for Summer 2010 is our FWW Treasure Trove – a small selection of parcels of “ready to drink” Fine Wines, mostly Bordeaux. These wines will change and come and go, so when you spot something you think is an amazing bargain from say, St Emilion, in the Trove you best snap it up as we cannot promise to find the same again. This will be appearing as a special section on the Wine List page – just as soon as our web wizard, Ben from Pure Design International can magic it up for us.

Riesling Reminiscences

Helen Brotherton — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:19:49 +0000

A very happy Loosen lady!

I have finally topped up the dangerously low Riesling levels in my body with a long overdue Wine Tour of Germany. Part work, part pleasure we had an exhilarating time trotting round Weingut’s and Estates in the Pfalz, the Nahe and the Mosel, picking up samples to use for our Wine Courses and Wine Tastings.
For those of you who think German wine is all sugary sweet and vapid medium wines such as Liebfraumilch, Blue Nun and Black Tower, it is time to rethink and revisit.

For a start the German wine industry has been giving itself a thorough shake up over the last couple of decades. Plantings of the desperately uninteresting grape variety, Müller Thurgau (the demon behind the worst of wines like Niersteiner Gutes Domtal and its friends), are now in decline, amounting to now no more than about 14%. Climate change, better winemaking technique and a genuine thirst to meet strong demand for drier styles and indeed Red wines has totally changed the face of German viticulture and winemaking. The region where we based ourselves, the Pfalz, (in a charming village called Kirchheim in an apartment on a Wine Estate to be close to the action), is considered to be the most dynamic and innovative. On the stupidly picturesque and idyllic Deutsche Weinstrasse, a winding road through Hansel and Gretel villages full of Wineries, stretching from the Alsace border up along the slopes of the Haardt mountains for some 70km, there are vineyards brimful of different varieties: the Pinot family is fully represented (known as “Burgunder” in Germany), so we have Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir), Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc) and Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris or Grigio); we have Dornfelder, St Laurent, Portuguesier and Cabernet Dorsa adding to the Red line-up and alongside the heavenly Riesling, is Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer and Scheurebe for the Whites.
We arrived just in time for a Weinfest on the Sunday, stretching along the whole Weinstrasse all the villages had “open house” with entertainment and wine tents representing the local estates. Pleasingly the tradition is to serve the chilled wines in large 250ml glasses and charge about 3€ – it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that just 3 glasses later, you’ve consumed a bottle! The route was closed to car traffic for the day so the Germans had taken to their bicycles in their droves – we, rather pathetically, opted for the train and deposited ourselves in Bad Durkheim for the day to enjoy the festivities. A perfect day was then peaked by a sublime live organ recital of Bach in the church in Kirchheim in the evening – truly magnificent!
The Mosel region was for me, the highlight of the trip, however, as we had a private tasting arranged at one of Germany’s best known estates – Dr Ernst Loosen in Bernkastel on the Wednesday. Here my Riesling obsession was finally sated as good old Ernie reigns supreme as master of this exquisite aromatic variety. Traditionally off-dry and low in alcohol, delicate, racy and minerally Mosel Riesling’s can be truly superb. Ernie has some of the best Grand Cru vineyard sites in the area and to taste the differences in the wines was amazing! We tasted, for example two Riesling Spatleses from different vineyards: both exact mirrors analytically – same vintage, same alcohol, same PH and sweetness levels
and yet the different soils of the Wehlener Sohnnenuhr vineyard and the Urziger Wurzgarten site meant the two wines tasted utterly and deliciously different! This was the best illustration of the mysterious concept of “terroir” that I have ever come across. These wines are the supreme aperitif – you really don’t need to be munching at the same time to thoroughly enjoy the honey and apple flavours, the steeliness and grace and the refreshingly sherbetty acidity.
I’m a very smug and happily Rieslinged out bunny!!!

Helen Brotherton
07.07.09

Wine Tasting Riviera . Wine Events Riviera . Fine Wine Works » riesling

New Wine List available shortly!

Riesling Reminiscences