March 2007: a St Patrick's Day curry, a restaurant staff tasting, Usseglio vertical and other notes

February ended up a quiet month for the blog. We went to Burgundy over the half-term holiday and stayed in the quiet town of Givry. During the week we visited the odd vineyard and popped the odd cork in the evenings and every time it was the wine from Givry that really impressed. Elsewhere, the 2004s were often hard, not so Givry. Other 2005s were completely unapproachable but those from Givry were already delicious to drink. At first we thought there must be something in the idea that wines really need to settle down after any journey, undoubtedly true but when some of these wines had travelled only a few miles and had come from estates with equally good reputations it was a little perplexing. More later!

29/03/2007 A staff tasting today at Tatler's Restaurant in Norwich. Starting with the house whites, the Moulin de Gassac Sauvignon Blanc proved a popular house wine with easy fruit and surprisingly good acidity. For me it made a good aperitif wine as it got my mouth geared up for some food (unfortunately the kitchen was closed for the afternoon). There was a Spanish white which everyone found unacceptable (ditto the red, both from another supplier) but the Domaine des Anges Blanc was the real star, a really fruity wine with some body and good balance - a real star white and extremely good value for this restaurant (the Rouge also lived up to expectations a few wines later. Both were also tasted on St Patrick's Day - see below). The surprise red was the Marco Maci "Corte Barocca". I knew it to be a good wine but it seems to have added a few pounds since we last met. Really superb with lots of southern depth. If you like Puglian wines this is for you. I will take a bottle to my in-laws this weekend to get the full experience. Then onto a selection of more prestigious wines starting with Il Molino di Grace's modern-style Chianti Classico 2003 which is very cherry with oak very much in support in this very ripe vintage, handled well. Bodegas Muro's Rioja Crianza was quite oaky, as expected but with some sweet, black fruit character emerging on the second taste. More popular was the red Domaine du Seuil 2003, in effect the second wine from Château du Seuil. This has really good, ripe blackcurrant fruit, not overdone, with integrated toasty oak - the best sub-£10 Bordeaux on the market? It could well be. Finally, Domaine de la Tourade's Vacqueyras 2003 proved the surprise hit of the tasting, everyone falling for its traditional-style charm with its spice and cherry fruit. This was easily the most food friendly (especially with Tatlers' tendency towards fusion food) although the Bordeaux was probably not far behind because of its modern style.

26/03/2007 and 27/03/2007 I was asked a couple of days ago which of Raymond Usseglio's wines I would recommend for current drinking and I realised that apart from the 2002 I hadn't actually tasted any of the vintages currently available (2001 to 2004) for a while so I dug out a bottle of each and proceeded to knock out any preconceptions I had. I had thought the 2001 would still be slightly closed (it was last time I tasted it but that was almost a year ago) and the 2004 probably dumbing down whilst I supposed the 2003 would never do this. Not all of this is borne out by my experiences over the last couple of days. The 2004 Chàteauneuf-du-Pape is a magnificent, quite modern Chàteauneuf which shows the influence consultant œnologist Xavier Vignon has over the young Stéfane Usseglio. It certainly was not closed and I can’t really see how it ever could be. Very exuberant, lots going on. Vibrant fruit with plenty of support from tannins (ripe) and nice acidity. All in all, a mouthfilling, juicy, even crunchy wine. Still young though so, whilst it was a real pleasure to drink, I would probably opt for drinking my case after a few more years (but, then, I like Châteauneuf-du-Pape at 7-10 years on the whole). The 2003 Chàteauneuf-du-Pape was more showy, very big but slightly less complex, I thought. Still, a great success from the difficult heatwave vintage (definitely a caveat emptor vintage). Very drinkable though. Finally, the 2001 Chàteauneuf-du-Pape, on paper the best of the trio and definitely the one with the most subtlety and more going on than the 2003. It will be a close call as to which is the better of 2001 and 2004 in the end (many winemakers in the region are beginning to be more convinced by their 2004s than their - excellent - 2001s) but, really, so what? There is a distinctive "house" style running through all these wines so what better way to discover the differences from one vintage to the next? I must remember to thank the person who made the initial enquiry: I have rather enjoyed this lesson. Further note: the 2005s from Usseglio are extremely good although I am not yet convinced they are any better than the 2004s but I did taste the 2006s from the barrel and, unless anything goes seriously awry between now and the wines getting into bottles, this is a vintage to save up for, for this producer at least.

25/03/2007 A fellow winemerchant once suggested good Northern Rhône Syrah with curry and, whilst I have never been brave (or stupid?) enough to risk a bottle of Hermitage on a Vindaloo, I can see some merit in pairing a good, peppery Syrah with some modest spice (and, perhaps, a brawny Barossa Shiraz with something reasonably hot). March has become a month for meatballs and, with practice, I am quite pleased with how mine are turning out (the trick is to ignore recipes and makes the balls good and spicy and leave the sauce fairly plain to counter the heat from the meat). So how did Pascal Perrier's Domaine de Gachon St Joseph 1999 work? First of all, when is this wine going to be fully mature? It is drinking superbly but there is still a way to go, I think. Lots of character, this wine couldn't come from anywhere else, give or take a few miles and the odd appellation (it could pass for a light Côte Rôtie) and, certainly, it has plenty of spice. And, yes, it worked superbly with the new, improved meatballs.

20/03/2007 On a break from putting up my sons' new trampoline in the dark, I am rather enjoying a glass of Marco Maci's 2004 Salice Salentino "Ribò". Last time I had this was at a tasting in November alongside the lighter "Corte Barocca" and I wrote that this was a "sit down and eat" wine but now, on its own I think I can revise that. Yes, it is better with food (the first glass, earlier, was with a light chicken and rice dinner) but it's light enough to enjoy afterwards as well. The nose is attractively southern with just a whiff of oak, no doubting its Italian roots. The cherry red colour is echoed in the fruit which has a slightly sour cherry character and, again, a hint of vanilla from the oak. All in all a "Ronseal" wine, everything you would want it to be and, perhaps, rather more.

17/03/2007 St Patrick's Day. We have been invited to an Indo-Pakistani supper with some friends, cooked by one of them. The choice of wine with Asian food is always difficult for me (I generally have a good lager with curry rather than trying to come up with a less than ideal wine to pair with it) so I took some Domaine des Anges to go with the Irish aspect of the evening (quickly forgotten but the wines went down well). The 2005 Blanc is fruity but dry, probably what a decent Chablis should be, quite juicy and crisp like a good apple (also tasted at Tatlers on 30/03, above). The 2004 Rouge is very well defined, a good food wine as any well-made Rhône red should be (but not all are). The Asian food turned out to be delicious, from the superb samosas and pakoras to the assorted meat and vegetable dishes that were presented to us at the table. None were very hot, so wine turned out to match them well, but all were expertly spiced and cooked to perfection. I had intended to pinch a copy of the menu so I could write about each dish with seeming knowledge but one thing I can say is that a good, medium red with not too much in the way of tannin, good acidity (but, again, not too much) and mature fruit character does go well with this sort of food. The DDA red is such a wine.

Anyone in south Norfolk or Suffolk interested in having an Indo-Pakastani meal cooked for them in their own home (and you could pick up a few tricks along the way if you want to pitch in as sous-chef) should definitely call Ayesha Manto of Mazedaar (07984 544005 or e-mail manto@doctors.org.uk - website coming soon). She has an à la carte menu and some set menus as starting points but if you have any particular dishes you want, my guess is Ayesha will be able to produce something rather special.

15/03/2007 The warmer weather makes me yearn for the hills of Beaujolais (which can be very cold in the wind and rain but a fabulous place to visit in the summer) so out with a bottle of Domaine de la Madone's 2003 Fleurie "Fûts de chêne" which I haven't tasted in some months - even a Beaujolais this rich is too light (for me) during the cold winter months. This has come on well since last year. With 2003 being such a hot vintage, there were some fabulous Beaujolais wines made but with this comes a price, namely that to reap the benefit of the great vintage, most wines need longer bottle age than those from a more regular vintage. This wine certainly conforms to that rule. The oak is not heavily done so the purity of the Gamay fruit shines through. Perhaps it comes after weeks of Rhône reds but it comes across as a fairly light wine so, with its relatively low alcohol and fine tannins, this is one to please people who want to drink red but don't like the heaviness of many of them. Certainly this is not jammy, overblown, over-extracted or too anything.

08/03/2007 Meatballs generally call for Spanish or Italian wines - tonight it was the turn of the 2003 Barbera from Luigi Einaudi's descendants. This works on every level. I am still impressed with the way the oak blends in with the fruit to override the acidity to render this wine not just drinkable (sorry to Barbera lovers but there are a lot of poor examples out there) but actually a world-class wine which can fight its corner and come out on top. When we were in Piedmont last year, I tasted a lot of the region's wines and there were plenty of supposedly more prestigious ones coming out of Barolo and Barbaresco I thought drinkable but so what? This wine is the real deal: lots of support for the really tasty fruit and it cuts through the food as easily as a knife. So the answer's no, you can't buy it - I want it all to myself.

04/03/2007 Parker's bi-monthly paper, The Wine Advocate, arrived on my doorstep yesterday with his Rhône report. Quite damming about Gigondas and to some extent I agree. I regularly visit the Caveau in the centre of the village to get a feel for each vintage (not having Mr P's clout I can't get the syndicate to lay on a tasting for me) and I have had increasingly mixed feelings. Whilst the overall quality level has definitely gone up over the years, there are only a few estates producing really exciting wines. One is Domaine Brusset (whose 2004 HDM is as good as, perhaps better than, the 2003); another is Château de St Cosme. Louis Barruol clearly has a game plan to make the best he can. There were three wines in 2004 and the basic Gigondas did not suffer because of the draw out for the prestige cuvées which, by the way, are fantastic in this vintage. So to the 2004 Gigondas which is still young, evidenced by a slight alcoholic kick when the first glass was tasted. By the second, though, all the richness and roundness of the wine was in full swing. A lovely glass - my only criticism is: where is the rusticity that I have always known to be Gigondas?

03/03/2007 Tonight, a rare opportunity to taste the two reds from the 2003 vintage at Domaine de Cristia. The 2003 Châteauneuf-du-Pape was excellent. Whereas a few months ago it wasn't balanced (too much alcohol for a start), now it has got itself together well. It has a lovely sweetness about it and, I think, this is a wine for which the word "unctuous" really hits the mark. With four of us going at it, the bottle really was far too small - my only real criticism. So to "Renaissance" 2003, another wine which wears its alcohol well but, then, it always did. That said, whilst this is an incredible bottle of wine (and it does seem relatively cheap for what it is), for drinking now I slightly preferred the exuberance of its lesser sibling. That's not to say that, if I were awarding points a la Parker I would be giving the Tradition/Classique (anyway, the regular cuvée) higher marks but "Renaissance" clearly needs more time. Decanter panels take note: just because you can't see the merits of a prestige wine at two years old, it doesn't mean they're not there (I refer to a recent 2004 Châteauneuf-du-Pape tasting where some members of the panel clearly had little understanding of the appellation's wines).

02/03/2007 A couple of friend round for some tapas so, obviously, an excuse to try some of the Riojas. An opportunity to compare the two vintages of Miguel Angel Muro's "Vendemmia Seleccionada" wines. The 2001 is soft and classic, a reserva in style if not in price. Good fruit, softened by time and American oak. The 2002 shows Miguel's hand more: clearly a more contemporary style (I hesitate to use the term "modern" with all its connotations) with the fruit clearly taking the upper hand. I prefer this style although both have their merits. Oh, and both go very well with meatballs!

Complete Blog list by date - what we have been sampling month by month