The Big Red Wine Company Blog

March 2008: Bringing in the New Year - at last!

Our weblog is simply a diary of events we have attended, reviews about us and, above all, a record of our impression of wines we have consumed from our list. No marks out of ten, twenty or a hundred and no stars awarded, just our feelings. One thing that will become increasingly apparent to anyone who reads this regularly is our love of red wines (not many white wines noted except at tastings).

Click on the producer's name to go straight to the estate's profile page. Click on the wine name to go straight to the wine details page.

Complete Blog list by date - what we have been sampling month by month and other news and reviews.

I had anticipated a gentle start to the New Year but here we are, already two months in and I have only just started recording notes of wines tasted  - the first update since late October! Some of these notes go back a while...

22/11/2007 Ham & High article by wine writer Liz Sagues makes some encouraging noises about Xavier Vignon's "Blanc" and Côteaux des Travers' Rasteau Prestige

27/02/2008 Impatient to get stuck into the new arrivals from South-West France, I notice that Montauriol's "Mons Aureolus" is 2005, not 2004 as expected. Obviously this needs to be investigates. The wine is a fruit bomb, literally exploding in the mouth with the highly perfumed Négrette taking centre stage as expected. Nicely oaked too. The wine really needs a little time - it was much more mellow the following day.

28/02/2008 After the Montauriol was polished off, another cork was pulled, this time from a bottle of Lamartine's "Cuvée Particulière", a mere toddler from the 2004 vintage.As the bottle progressed it grew up though going from slightly awkward to deep and interesting. It didn't last long enough to get really profound though. Next time, perhaps (or just leave it to the Expression).

01/03/2008 First tasting since its arrival of Lacassagne's 2004 Madiran - a little more reserved than earlier tastings but with a bit of breathing the fruit starts to shine out. My guess is this will need a couple of weeks to settle after its journey (previous bottles were left to settle longer than this!) and it will be an instant hit.

03/03/2008 Lamartine's standard wine from 2004 - simply Château Lamartine, Cahors - is a lesson is understatement and just right for some home-made spicy kofte kebabs. No pretension here, just honest wine for drinking. No hurry though: my guess is it will be better still in another year or so.