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muggle not

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I used to enjoy a nice rioja  when dining with our neighbours (about half a dozen times a year) but a glass and a half used to go to my knees and my eyelids and was not particularly pleasant. Or a liqueur, in a glass or poured over icecream.

 Five years ago we moved house and now have a not very sociable neighbour one side and a convenience store car park the other. In addition I am now on medication that doesn't mix with alcohol.

So, alcoholic beverages are just used for cooking these days. I like the taste they give to a dish, but am happy to have the alcohol cooked off.

 

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2 hours ago, Madeleine said:but a nice cold glass of Prosecco goes down well on a warm day, even better if it's in Italy....

Oh yes, I love a chilled glass of Cava on a hot day :wub: and I’ve only recently tried Prosecco.

Previously I’ve have a few disappointing glasses of Prosecco before, usually at events. Discovered La Gioiosa Prosecco Brut (at most supermarkets) and that’s a lovely bubbly wine! More similar it tastes like a Cava, to me, rather than the sharp, lemony flavour of most Proseccos.

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I'm surprised I've not replied to this before.

 

I usually have a bottle of red once a week, usually on a Sunday with a roast or pasta dish, and very occasionally a bottle of white (which I don't have very often because it goes down like lemonade!)  Usually buy a Shiraz or Pinot Noir when I buy red, usually American or Australian.

 

I'm more of a real ale drinker though.

 

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1 hour ago, Raven said:

I'm surprised I've not replied to this before.

 

I usually have a bottle of red once a week, usually on a Sunday with a roast or pasta dish, and very occasionally a bottle of white (which I don't have very often because it goes down like lemonade!)  Usually buy a Shiraz or Pinot Noir when I buy red, usually American or Australian.

 

I'm more of a real ale drinker though.

 

It boggles my mind how many different varieties of wine there are from so many different Countries. The taste changes drastically by simply changing the percent of grape varieties in every wine. Like you, I maybe drink a bottle of red in a week. For me, red wine makes the meal when having with a roast or steak or pasta. I enjoy most types of red but my favorite is a good Rioja, especially one of the La Rioja Alta wines. Their 2010 vintage was exceptional. I have 28 bottles of their 2010 vintage which I will start consuming very soon. I have both the La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904 and the La Rioja Alta Ardanza Reserva Especial. These are wines for special occasions.

You may want to try a bottle of American Zinfandel although the Pinot Noirs are really good.

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12 minutes ago, muggle not said:

 

You may want to try a bottle of American Zinfandel although the Pinot Noirs are really good.

 

 

Had one last Sunday! (Zinfandel is another one I have on occasion).

 

Don't ask me about vintages and estates, however, I usually go for something preferably a couple of years old and not too expensive!

 

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I live near Bordeaux so there's loads of excellent wine made locally (our mayor makes a wonderful rosé and a sparkling pink which is our go-to party wine). Then if you want to up the game a little there are Graves wines just over the river (lovely, flinty dry white and reds) and a little further away there's St Emilion and the Medoc where bottles can get seriously expensive. I went to a wine tasting at Chateau Haut Brion (one of the top 4 Bordeaux chateaux) where they opened two bottles for a group of 15 - 2005 vintage, which retailed at £500-700 and £750- 950 respectively! They don't sell wine at the chateau either!

 

I also love Sauternes and it's close cousin made on our side of the river, Loupiac, whch are vins liquoreux, sweet and aromatic, and are defintely not the same as most sweet wines (made quite differently) and drunk here with savory dishes, not sweet ones. I occasionally take tour groups of mostly Americans to a couple of the Sauternes chateaux and even those who go saying they hate sweet wines are usually totally converted by the end of the tasting.

 

 

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6 hours ago, France said:

I live near Bordeaux so there's loads of excellent wine made locally (our mayor makes a wonderful rosé and a sparkling pink which is our go-to party wine). Then if you want to up the game a little there are Graves wines just over the river (lovely, flinty dry white and reds) and a little further away there's St Emilion and the Medoc where bottles can get seriously expensive. I went to a wine tasting at Chateau Haut Brion (one of the top 4 Bordeaux chateaux) where they opened two bottles for a group of 15 - 2005 vintage, which retailed at £500-700 and £750- 950 respectively! They don't sell wine at the chateau either!

 

I also love Sauternes and it's close cousin made on our side of the river, Loupiac, whch are vins liquoreux, sweet and aromatic, and are defintely not the same as most sweet wines (made quite differently) and drunk here with savory dishes, not sweet ones. I occasionally take tour groups of mostly Americans to a couple of the Sauternes chateaux and even those who go saying they hate sweet wines are usually totally converted by the end of the tasting.

 

 

I once owned 2 cases of the 1982 Bordeaux. One of the cases was Chateau Bon Pasteur and the other case was Branaire Ducru. I bought the wine as wine futures while it was still in the cask. Excellent vintage and I enjoyed it tremendously. I envy your tasting of the Chateau Haut Brion. Renowned wine critic Robert Parker once said that his goal in life was to drink as much Haut Brion as he could afford. :)

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On 02/06/2021 at 4:06 PM, Raven said:

 

Had one last Sunday! (Zinfandel is another one I have on occasion).

 

Found a bottle of Hardy’s Zinfandel in the cellar  garage today, so that’s now chilling :)

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4 hours ago, Marie H said:

Found a bottle of Hardy’s Zinfandel in the cellar  garage today, so that’s now chilling :)

I wonder how long it has been in the garage. :)

What vintage is it?

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16 hours ago, muggle not said:

I wonder how long it has been in the garage. :)

What vintage is it?

Oh dear, what was I thinking that it was a Hardy White Zinfandel *face palm*, when is it a simple Gallo Family White Zinfandel :eek:. How embarrassing!

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19 minutes ago, Marie H said:

Oh dear, what was I thinking that it was a Hardy White Zinfandel *face palm*, when is it a simple Gallo Family White Zinfandel :eek:. How embarrassing!

Have a glass on me. :)

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3 hours ago, muggle not said:

Have a glass on me. :)

It was a lovely glass (2016 year, so it had been in the garage quite a while) with a quiche & salad. It’s hot out this afternoon, 25°C in the shade!

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On 05/06/2021 at 3:02 PM, France said:

I live near Bordeaux so there's loads of excellent wine made locally (our mayor makes a wonderful rosé and a sparkling pink which is our go-to party wine). Then if you want to up the game a little there are Graves wines just over the river (lovely, flinty dry white and reds) and a little further away there's St Emilion and the Medoc where bottles can get seriously expensive. I went to a wine tasting at Chateau Haut Brion (one of the top 4 Bordeaux chateaux) where they opened two bottles for a group of 15 - 2005 vintage, which retailed at £500-700 and £750- 950 respectively! They don't sell wine at the chateau either!

 

I also love Sauternes and it's close cousin made on our side of the river, Loupiac, whch are vins liquoreux, sweet and aromatic, and are defintely not the same as most sweet wines (made quite differently) and drunk here with savory dishes, not sweet ones. I occasionally take tour groups of mostly Americans to a couple of the Sauternes chateaux and even those who go saying they hate sweet wines are usually totally converted by the end of the tasting.

 

 

Ooh, reading your Bordeaux wines made me thirsty for a glass of wine! I’ve hardly had any French wines, instead it’s Southern Hemisphere red wines. Somehow I just usually feel intimidated by French wines. 

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23 hours ago, Marie H said:

Ooh, reading your Bordeaux wines made me thirsty for a glass of wine! I’ve hardly had any French wines, instead it’s Southern Hemisphere red wines. Somehow I just usually feel intimidated by French wines. 

What a shame. To be honest, and it's not just prejudice because I live here, I think that French wines that cost about the same as Australian ones are often better, because transport costs play a major part. The French also usually go for blended wines rather than single grape varieties.

 

I remember a wine merchant in the Uk telling me that all wine has a certain amount of fixed cost, taxes, duty, transport can vary a little which is approximately the same for bottles costing £5 and bottle costing £10 (or £500), so what the extra £5 reperesents is the quality of the product.

 

If you want to give French wines a try look for chateau bottled wines "mis en bouteille au chateau" rather than ones produced by companies. It's not an abolute guarentee of good wine but given that most French chateaux sell a lot of their product locally it's usally quite drinkable.

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19 minutes ago, France said:

 

I remember a wine merchant in the Uk telling me that all wine has a certain amount of fixed cost, taxes, duty, transport can vary a little which is approximately the same for bottles costing £5 and bottle costing £10 (or £500), so what the extra £5 reperesents is the quality of the product.

 

 

I'm probably going to get this wrong, but I believe that something like £4.00 out of every £5.00 bottle of wine in the UK is tax, so if you buy a £5.00 bottle of wine, the bottle only cost £1.00 to make and transport etc.  Therefore, if you buy a £6.00 bottle of wine, the wine itself should be twice as good. 

 

This was all explained by Alan Davis on an episode of QI, but I'm struggling to find the video of it!

 

Either way, I'm off to find some now...

 

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15 hours ago, France said:

If you want to give French wines a try look for chateau bottled wines "mis en bouteille au chateau" rather than ones produced by companies. It's not an abolute guarentee of good wine but given that most French chateaux sell a lot of their product locally it's usally quite drinkable.

Yes, most French wines are still estate bottled, rather than the Australian etc. wines tanked, then bottled in the UK. I do remember we had Marks & Spencer Le Froglet Shiraz before, and that was lovely, but I haven’t seen that for a few yeas now.

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25 minutes ago, Marie H said:

Yes, most French wines are still estate bottled, rather than the Australian etc. wines tanked, then bottled in the UK. I do remember we had Marks & Spencer Le Froglet Shiraz before, and that was lovely, but I haven’t seen that for a few yeas now.

A lot of them aren't chateau bottled and if it's labled as say 'Bordeaux rosé' some companies have no compunction about putting an entirely different wine into the second load of bottling to the first providing it's all Bordeaux rosé so two bottles bought at the same time can taste quite different. (Know this for a fact, my husband worked for one of those companies!)

 

Marks do buy from chateaux and re-lable the bottle (or did) but even so I'd suggest going somewhere like Majestic and getting a bottle that you know comes directly from the chateau.

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

On 6/5/2021 at 10:02 AM, France said:

I live near Bordeaux so there's loads of excellent wine made locally (our mayor makes a wonderful rosé and a sparkling pink which is our go-to party wine). Then if you want to up the game a little there are Graves wines just over the river (lovely, flinty dry white and reds) and a little further away there's St Emilion and the Medoc where bottles can get seriously expensive. I went to a wine tasting at Chateau Haut Brion (one of the top 4 Bordeaux chateaux) where they opened two bottles for a group of 15 - 2005 vintage, which retailed at £500-700 and £750- 950 respectively! They don't sell wine at the chateau either!

 

I also love Sauternes and it's close cousin made on our side of the river, Loupiac, whch are vins liquoreux, sweet and aromatic, and are defintely not the same as most sweet wines (made quite differently) and drunk here with savory dishes, not sweet ones. I occasionally take tour groups of mostly Americans to a couple of the Sauternes chateaux and even those who go saying they hate sweet wines are usually totally converted by the end of the tasting.

 

 

Ok, I am an American, convert me. :)

I am not a fan of sweet wines. What Sauterne would you recommend?

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First thing to know is that Sauternes can be eye-wateringly expensive. The entry level price for Chateau d'Yquem, the top de la top of Sauternes is £250 a bottle!

 

For a good bottle you'd pay 30 euros here, and upwards. There is a reason why it's so expensive; nearly all grapes whether picked by machine or by hand are picked by the bunch. The flavours in the Sauternes grapes come from a microclimate and the grapes ripen unevenly, so the pickers cut out individual ripe grapes, wait a few days for the grapes on the patch to ripen a bit more, go back and cut out the ripe grapes. All Sauternes chateaux have to send their pickers out at least three times before all the grapes are harvested, some like Chateau d'Yquem do it 11 times. Labour costs are huge and there are no shortcuts.

 

Lecture finished! I take groups to Chateau Rayne Vigneau and their wine is delicious. They make 2, their second wine Madame de Vigneau (I think, could be Rayne) is lighter and there's their first wine Chatau de Rayne Vigneau, full bodied and more expensive.  They are a premier cru but to be honest any decent Sauternes chateau which bottles at the chateau and isn't dirt cheap should be OK. The rcher the straw colour the more intense the flavour.

 

Drink them chilled, as an aperatif, with snacks, salty food, (absolutely wonderful wth sardine pate!) and surprisingly, Indian food and curries. Not with sweet things, it's too much.

 

 

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On 6/28/2021 at 9:52 AM, France said:

First thing to know is that Sauternes can be eye-wateringly expensive. The entry level price for Chateau d'Yquem, the top de la top of Sauternes is £250 a bottle!

 

For a good bottle you'd pay 30 euros here, and upwards. There is a reason why it's so expensive; nearly all grapes whether picked by machine or by hand are picked by the bunch. The flavours in the Sauternes grapes come from a microclimate and the grapes ripen unevenly, so the pickers cut out individual ripe grapes, wait a few days for the grapes on the patch to ripen a bit more, go back and cut out the ripe grapes. All Sauternes chateaux have to send their pickers out at least three times before all the grapes are harvested, some like Chateau d'Yquem do it 11 times. Labour costs are huge and there are no shortcuts.

 

Lecture finished! I take groups to Chateau Rayne Vigneau and their wine is delicious. They make 2, their second wine Madame de Vigneau (I think, could be Rayne) is lighter and there's their first wine Chatau de Rayne Vigneau, full bodied and more expensive.  They are a premier cru but to be honest any decent Sauternes chateau which bottles at the chateau and isn't dirt cheap should be OK. The rcher the straw colour the more intense the flavour.

 

Drink them chilled, as an aperatif, with snacks, salty food, (absolutely wonderful wth sardine pate!) and surprisingly, Indian food and curries. Not with sweet things, it's too much.

 

 

Thank you. I will do a little research and see what is available. I do some wine purchasing online from Wine shops in the U.S. and maybe the next case I buy I will add a bottle of Sauterne to try.

This is one wine shop that I sometimes purchase wine from. Their selection of Sauterne is not real large but I find that is the case with many shops in the U.S. Please take a look at their Sauterne wines. Saratoga Wine Exchange

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21 hours ago, muggle not said:

Thank you. I will do a little research and see what is available. I do some wine purchasing online from Wine shops in the U.S. and maybe the next case I buy I will add a bottle of Sauterne to try.

This is one wine shop that I sometimes purchase wine from. Their selection of Sauterne is not real large but I find that is the case with many shops in the U.S. Please take a look at their Sauterne wines. Saratoga Wine Exchange

Chateau de Sudiraut is one of the top class Sauternes chateaux and right next door to Chateau Y'quem, their second wines (the Castlenau de Sudiraut or Lions de Sudiraut) will both be very well made and lighter than their premium wine but probably the ones to go for.

 

Sauternes is an intense drink and very few people drink more than one or two glasses at a time. It keeps brilliantly in the fridge with the cork put back in (because of the high sugar content, think of how long jam keeps). The purists say you can keep it for 10 days to 3 weeks, I've had an opened bottle in the fridge for over three months and it was still perfect when we finished it.

 

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  • 4 months later...

I  just discovered a very good wine, 2016 Marques de Murrietta Rioja. I initially ordered 6 bottles of it in a mixed case order but today have ordered a full case of 12 bottles since I enjoyed it so much. The wine is much better after decanting for  a few hours, put back in the bottle and then drinking on maybe the 3rd or 4th day after opening. :) this wine is really, very, very, good.

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