First world problems, wine related

Making Beef Wellington for dinner tonight.

Does the 2005 South African Tukulu Pinotage or the 1999 St Emilion Grand Cru go better with it? The 2010 Chinon vieille vignes is just too young I think

personally I prefer the a vielle vignes chinon over anything to come out of st emillion that isnt at least a grand cru classe. Grand Cru is pretty meaningless.

ALso, Ive rarely found even a VV cabernet franc (and even less so a cot grape) that keeps for very long – chinon drink well young.

Personally Im a sucker for Saumur Champigny – cabernet franc, no more than 4 years old.

can you still get thunderbird ?

not the better vintages, no.

not the better vintages, no

Buckie it is then!

Making Beef Wellington for dinner tonight.

but if you havent already opened the wine youre not eating until 10 are you?

You can’t beat a good Burgundy with Beef Wellington something like this, yet the blends of your choices should go well.

Black Tower would get my vote. Just colour it red with some food colouring; most wine buffs can’t tell the difference*

*as proven on TV.

🙂

You want a medium to full bodied red but a softer version. So of the three listed (and ignoring vintages) I would suggest that the St Emilion fits the bill best followed by the Chinon, then the Pinotage. Not much to choose perhaps between 2 and 3 but St Emillion and BW is a classic combo IMO

Enjoy

dirty oenophiles.. you’re sick

italian wine for me, made with a smile.
french stuff, made with a frown.

but if you havent already opened the wine youre not eating until 10 are you?

Still some doubters, but little point imo in just opening the bottle to let it breathe, more effective to give it 5 minutes in a good glass.

You can’t beat a good Burgundy with Beef Wellington something like this, yet the blends of your choices should go well.

Pinotage isn’t a blend

Still some doubters, but little point imo in just opening the bottle to let it breathe,

I speak euphemistically. By “open” I mean decanted and aerated – but still for a good hour or so, esp cab franc & cot.

Pinotage isn’t a blend

and Chinon is usually 100% cabernet franc too.

Nearly anything from here St Emillion is good, a glass pre cooking, one during, one whilst eating, one whilst relaxing.

Watch for sulphates.

Nearly anything from here St Emillion is good

I can only disagree. IMO obviously 😉

I spent some time researching bordelaise wine last year and was deeply disappointed. But that’s another story…

Nearly anything from here St Emillion is good

I can only agree with Stoner. There’s probably hundreds of grand cru wines in the appellation, but that’s pretty meaningless here..

in St Emilion, where terroir is also so vital, a wine qualifies for grand cru status based on little more than a few details of the harvest – a maximum of 40 hl/ha rather than 45 hl/ha for basic St Emilion – and a minimum alcoholic strength of 11%, hardly a pressing requirement

Cru Bourgeois and grand cru are usefula and informative. They tell you the wine is made to a cahier de charges. How many wines don’t contain sulphites, bikebouy? A tiny amount from bio-fanatics but the majority of wine contain sulphites.

Now the osmosis trucks do the rounds of the vinyards, Bordeaux wines are pretty consistent year to year. Pay a bit more and the cahier de charges will include hand picking which means the wine wasn’t made from a mixture of good grapes with rotten grapes, leaves, snails… .
New oak barrels give that distintive tannin taste.

If you find a cru bourgeois disappoints then it’s probably that the wine from that area isn’t to your taste.

i’ve got a bottle of red wine with a picture of an owl on the label, do you think it will go well with a bar of fruit and nut chocolate and the last half hour of ‘sister act’?

Who’s the St Emilion grower? My guess at 99 its past best.

yip.

The other problem is the effect of the likes of Robert Parker and his never ending score inflation on better wines from both the left & right banks. It makes it impossible to build up a sense of the terroir because it’s unaffordable to buy samples and there are no cooperative or maison du vin’s that you can use for comparative testing.

So I have to admit writing off bordeaux. Leave it to the chinese to mix 50:50 with coke 🙁

You can find better wines in burgundy, the loire and dare I say it even Languedoc for much less.

Cru Bourgeois and grand cru are usefula and informative. They tell you the wine is made to a cahier de charges.

hardly useful, or very informative, again imo. 🙂

in St Emilion, where terroir is also so vital, a wine qualifies for grand cru status based on little more than a few details of the harvest – a maximum of 40 hl/ha rather than 45 hl/ha for basic St Emilion – and a minimum alcoholic strength of 11%

How many wines don’t contain sulphites, bikebouy?

Even then the bio fanatics generally ignore what the neighbouring vignerons are sticking on their vines. Their agriculture biologique labels count for very little IRL.

Edukator – every AOC has a Cahier des Charges. Some of the requirements excellent – limiting yield for example. But others are just minimum requirements that shouldn’t even have to be said (Sancerre springs to mind)

Proper cru designation should be by testing college – and that is what GC Classe is for. But sticking GC on a plain AOC wine is misleading.

EDIT: vinney, edukator is alluding to the long list of requirements that make up the AOC characteristics. Not just those two.
http://www.qualibordeaux.org/app/download/2828247811/CDC_Saint-Emilion+Grand+Cru_JORF+du+7+d%C3%A9cembre+2011.pdf?t=1324032503

A ral cahiers xde charges

Having done the vendange at cru bougeois Château Chantelys in the Médoc I can assure you that:

4. Conduite de l’exploitation tant sur le plan viticole que sur celui de l’œnologie appréciée en tenant compte de l’encépagement, de la structuration et de la conduite du vignoble, de la traçabilité parcellaire en vinification et des conditions de vinification et d’élevage (5 % de la note finale).

is taken very seriously and if you don’t do it properly you don’t get the cru bougeois label.

Point 4 looks vague but is very strict in practice. As a example, we harvested a lot of grpes that couldn’t be used in the cru bourgeois production as the vines were too young. The château makes table wines with those grapes.

I dont doubt the sincerity of the vendange, but that is not the whole story for quality.

My biggest gripe, not necc with the StEGC, is the use of AOC as a synonym for terroir when it is no such thing. Quality control should be an unwritten rule of AOC, Id like to see more emphasis on geology/terroir in classification as well as quality control.

The borgogne approach looks scary at first, but underneath it all is some excellent terroir information in the naming conventions.

Hence “vinification” in the cahiers de charges. The whole process follows a series of procedures like any other quality system. I don’t see how the Bourgogne approach is superior to the procedures used to make a cru bourgeois Bordeaux. Madame was a guide to the Bourgogne wine region in an earlier life BTW. IMO it’s just a question of which wine suits your taste. Both are quality products made to a high standard that obviously vary as any other agricultural product does. You pays your money… .

You pays far too much money.. in bordeaux 😉

Again the process in bordeaux is fine Im sure, but take for example Sancerre – 3 soil types, 2 hills, 4 aspects but just ONE AOC that everyone falls over themselves for in Waitrose where the chances are that theyre going to buy an inferior wine to the genuine quality sancerres.

There is only the domaine name to give guidance on quality, and for that you have to have tested and recalled domaine names in the whole AOC to be able to reliably pick wine, where as some more detail on the label as to location, or terroir would be helpful.

But of course, that’s not the french way. Make a market and milk it 😉

I have a few bottles of this left over. Any good?

😉

Just need a good reason to open one. And, as it happens, I have such a reason coming up later in the year.

coming up later in the year.

40 comes up quick dont it.

Nope, something else… 🙂 Will email you.

So you think ‘Californian Cabernet Sauvignon” on a bottel is more informative, Stoner. There is no lack of information concerning French wines, you just need several years to read and digest it all.

I hope it’s a very special occasion Flash because wine that costs that much would leave a bad taste in my mouth for anything less than the arrival of a healthy first child.

‘Californian Cabernet Sauvignon”

strawman argument. I think very few wine regions/AOC have decent terroir information on them. It doesnt mean the french AOC system is that perfect.

Edukator…… 8)

Who cares just drink the bugger. 😉