primowino

"There are few things worse than a bottle (let alone a cellar) of wine that is in decline." ← This is generally my opinion when thinking about how long to store my wine. However in the case of Cru Beaujolais, I find young examples fairly uninspiring and I'm prepared to risk losing them for the chance of getting something that tastes like mature burgundy - that is also how aged examples have generally tasted to me. I have about 8 bottles of various crus at the moment from 2002 and 2003. I haven't enjoyed the bottles I've had and will now happily take my chances by leaving them for 2 or 3 more years.

Here Here !! Thin and uninteresting. I'd rather drink beaujolais!

I sympathise with you having to watch your family putting coke into your wine. I have a very good friend who comes round to dinner quite often and after a couple of glasses of wine will add water to any she has after that. I have tried ridiculing her but it hasn't stopped and I don't know how else to manage it. The rest of us shouldn't have to drink rubbish to accommodate her and having a separate bottle open for her seems pretty rude.

Thanks Adam. Thankfully that sangiovese (Tempus Two) was one I bought two of. I thought of leaving it till next year some time.

Just a bit of advice from my experience. if you are going to take something particularly interesting to a dinner party make sure you have a second bottle at home just in case. I took a good and quite unusual claret, that I hadn't had before, to a friend's dinner a couple of years ago . Sure enough it didn't get drunk and I haven't seen it to buy since. I still wonder what it tasted like. The friends aren't interested in wine enough for me to have got informative feedback. On several occasions since I have bought two bottles of a wine to cover this eventuality or because my wife was going to a dinner party without me.

Adam, How dare you have such an exciting sounding meal ona n occasion when I wasn't available. When I quizzed Yvonne she didn't know exactly what was in the mole and the salad etc, so either you didn't give your usual breakdown of ingredients or she was getting tipsy for a change. How was the Tempus Two Sangiovese by the way, she was equally vague about this.

Just an example of how it pays to make enquiries. For the 25th anniversary of meeting my wife last year I wanted to dine at one of the top restaurants in Edinburgh, but take my bottle of 1986 Pichon Lalande. Of course none of the top restuarants have a BYOB policy. First I emailed Atrium and got a very pleasant reply saying they were pleased I would consider celbrating the occasion there and that althoguh it was not usually permitted I could take my wine and corkage would be £15. This wasn't a great surprise but I thought I would also contact Martin Wishart. They sent back a very short reply to the effect that corkage would be £35 (ouch!). I relayed this to a friend who said that he had enjoyed the restaurant in the Prestonfield House Hotel, Rhubarb - run by the same people as The Witchery. They quoted me £5 and needless to say we ate there, had a lovely meal and the wine service including decanting at the table was excellent.

Just a quick comment on the dessert. As has been mentioned chocolate is not great to match with wine. If wine is a major part of the evening I would suggest changing your dessert choice. I too am a Vouvray fan and I think your boss would love a nice Moelloux Vouvray with Tarte Tatin or Pear and Almond Tart. The other advantage is that any left over Vouvray would match perfectly with some goats cheese such as Valencay, if you haven't given up at that stage. If you drink Vouvray you'll know the good producers, but my favourites are Huet and Chateau Gaudrelle. The latter usually produces one style each vintage and doesn't indicate on the bottle whether it is sec, demi-sec or moelloux so you may need to do some research. I had their 1995 a while ago and that would be perfect if you could find any. On your recommendations from Oddbins. They are OK, but I can't help thinking you would be moving downmarket (and quality) from the original objective of spending up to £20 a bottle and impressing the boss. They don't stock good Vouvray but they do have a good range of burgundy and rhone. If you do the bourguignone and want something delicious with it, spend £18.50 on the Peregrine Pinot Noir from new Zealand. I promise you would struggle to find a burgundy of the quality for the price and it is very burgundian in style. The wine geek boss might appreciate your take on always serving burgundy with this dish. I haven't tried the Laurets but if I wanted a definite result I wouldn't chance a claret that I hadn't tried already especially in the £10 a bottle range (too hit and miss). Hope you have a great meal.

I went to a small Italian restaurant in Chester recently,which had a small but very good wine list almost exclusively Italian and with a Piedmont bias. The most interesting thing was that out of a total of maybe 30 red wines, there were 2 La Crimas - weird. The restaurant is called La Taverna on Lower Bridge St, not a very imaginative title but a very good restaurant compared to others we tried in Chester. The chef was very flexible with his freshly cooked ingedients, so no problem that my daughter wanted their traditional pesto sauce with her pasta, asparagus and smoked chicken rather than the mild brandy and peppercorn sauce advertised. It not surprisingly won best new restaurant in Chester last year and no I'm not related to, or in business with, the owners.

I don't remember that - don't tell me you once had a dinner party without me. The big cuttlefish we're both on the Algarve. I can't remember seeing cuttlefish on a restaurant menu in the Scotland. Do we catch them here and export them or is it just the restaurants that aren't interested?

On the cuttlefish issue, I have eaten quite a lot on the Algarve. I love the baby cuttlefish (trans:chocs) about an inch to two inches long that are fried in olive oil with garlic and wine and not much else. Eat the whole thing and spit out the cuttlebone. However, a couple of times I had a "grown up" the size of a large dinner plate. These were either boiled or steamed and I did find it hard going to eat my way through the various body parts with a gradual eruption of ink. May be I'm too squeamish with my food, but I also just preferred the flavour of fried babies.

A couple of other very good producers, to widen your net: Berger from Montlouis and Chateau Gaudrelle from Vouvray. Try a demi-sec with a good French goats cheese like Valancay - heaven.

Champalou and Huet, in particular, are very good producers. Just a quick note on aging, the 2002 and any other recent vintage won't be old for a long time yet. Any decent examples of sec and demi-sec vouvrays will keep and generally improve for a decade or more and the moelleux can almost keep forever. I have had Huet Clos du Bourg Moelleux from 1962 and 1959 in recent years and they were far from tired. Hope you enjoy(ed) your visits.

Just a quick addition to the discussion. I have nothing against getting a bit tipsy over dinner (drinking and driving is never a consideration), but my main qualm against some high alcohol wines is that they don't have the body or depth of flavour to balance the alcohol. So, as examples, I am quite happy to drink full-bodied syrah/shiraz at 14-15% whether from the Rhone or Australia, but I have never found Zinfandel or Pinot Noir that can handle these levels without being pretty nasty (to me).

There hasn't been much mention of Hamilton Russell, but if you like burgundy they are the obvious choice. They only produce Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and both are excellent. I don't know how easy they are to get in the US, in the UK they are fairly common but quite expensive. Adam Balic (the RSA-phobe) mentioned Buitenhoutkloof's Semillon from their Seven Chairs range. This is very good, but the Syrah from the same range, which I haven't had is supposedly spectacular. If your wife likes dry whites, I always found Boschendal to be the most reliable white producer when I lived there, albeit that was in the 1980s.

I met my wife 25 years ago yesterday and so off we went for a special meal at Rhubarb - the restaurant in the Prestonfield Hotel in Edinburgh, with the same owner as the Witchery and Tower restaurants for those that know the city. I had bought a bottle of 1979 Pichon Lalande a few years ago for this very day, knowing it was one of the successes of a mediocre bordeaux vintage. Before the meal we had a bottle of Taittinger Brut NV with my in-laws. It is a fairly light champagne for a premier house. However, on the experience of last nights bottle this is a bit deceptive. There was a lot of complex flavours going on, but unusually they were all fruity rather than toasty. The wine was a bit citrussy, but I was mainly getting crisp apples. The mousse was impressive as expected, but the only problem with that is it takes too long to pour four glasses safely when you want to get on with drinking it. Before our starters of Tian of Crab and Avocado and Veal Sweetbread and Chicken Liver Ravioli, we had an appetiser of a red mullet on noodles while the sommelier decanted our bordeaux. We shared glasses of a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a South African Chenin Blanc - decent wines but I can't remember the producers. The SB was fairly restrained on the tropical fruits that can be a bit much with food in some from NZ, while the Chenin was light but very pleasant. The sommelier had managed to get nearly all the bordeaux from the bottle and I couldn't see much sediment in the drop he'd left. I think this was a genuine lack of sediment and not me having disturbed it too much on the taxi journey, because when we moved on to the red it was bright and clear in the glass. I know we should have been eating big chunks of red meat with the wine, but Yvonne is partial to halibut and had the interesting pairing with black pudding. I had their take on Surf and Turf, with effectively two dishes on one plate divided by a line of hollandaise. On one side was Braised shin of veal with foie gras and girolles and on the other, lobster in truffle jus. As well as bright and clear, the wine was amazingly young looking for 25 years, with no signs of browning in the purple rim. I think we were lucky enough to be drinking it at its peak, because despite its youthful look I sensed that the last of the tannins were just disappearing. I usually associate good Pauillac with strong cassis and good French oak (pencil shavings!) flavours. These were not really present, possibly due to the age or the champagne and rich food having dulled my senses, or possibly this is a typical Lalande because I have seen them described as silky. There was hints of blackcurrant-ish fruit and some coffe or chocolately richness, but the overriding experience was of a perfectly balanced and smooth (but certainly not dull) wine. Dessert was an assiette of rhubarb desserts (cheesecake, crumble, creme brulee and ice cream), but we'd had enough wine by this stage and I'm not sure what would have matched the range of desserts. Overall it was an event worthy of the celebration, roll on our 25th Wedding Anniversary in a few years (1986 Ducru Beaucaillou).

I'm with Nimzo on the Gonzalez Byass Noe being an excellent heavy example. If someone wants to get the full PX expereince from a sherry that doesn't cost too much and is widely available I would point them at this one. Warning! pour small glasses, this is rich stuff - liquid figs in alcoholic guise.

An advantage of being a fan of sweet Chenin Blanc is that good French examples, mainly Vouvray and Montlouis Moelleux, are very reasonably priced in the UK compared to other top quality dessert wines. Also, I don't have the same problem as you Steve as I've learnt to live with the fact that there are no great Chenin producers in the UK (sorry, make that wine producers). I have just bought a Moelleux wine from the tiny Anjou Coteaux de Loire appellation (Domaine du Fresches 2001) for only £10 and I plan to drink it this weekend (if you behave yourself Adam). I'll post anything interesting to say about it.

If you want to drink wine with curry rather than beer or lassi (a good idea but make it light), then gewurtztraminer is the obvious answer. However, I would warn that with anything beyond very mildly spiced the nuances of the wine will be lost and I wouldn't spend too much on the wine.

This may be a bit pedantic, but should you compare Brunellos with sangiovese wines as it is a slightly different (clone) grape called sangiovese grosso. It would be an interesting (and enjoyable) exercise to taste Brunellos against similarly priced and aged Chianti Reservas to see which offered the better quality/value.

Adam, your wife thinks rose is a better choice for sushi (but what does she know). More importantly she does want you to stop messing around and get down to work (or the gym).

I am a big Loire chenin blanc fan and I agree with all the recommendations for Vouvray, especially Huet. It's all down to personal taste but I find the demi-sec Vouvrays provide the best experience, with Moelleux wines often being very ethereal and dry Vouvrays being too acidic tasting for some people. As an alternative to Vouvray you could get hold of some Montlouis from across the river, the wines of similar quality but often better value. Some one has already mentioned Deletang as a top producer, but I would definitely add Berger to that.

Carolyn, you've obviously drunk a lot of wine including some premium stuff, so I'm amazed that you've never tasted red burgundy. Is this through and aversion to all things French or overt patriotism for US wines? Red burgundy is the forebear of all other pinot noirs and is the style that many of your California and Oregon pinots are aiming to replicate. I know red burgundy can be quite expensive, but not really in comparison with many US pinots. For value for money I would look out for some of the less well known appellations or those more famous for white wines, e.g St Aubin, Fixin, Marsannay, Santenay and Chassagne Montrachet.

An essentially similar item is called a 'scallop' in the North of England.