Wine Consultant

I have a number of tastings scheduled this month starting tomorrow in Grey Lynn at the Wine Vault  and running right through to the 26th when we will be at the Snells Beach Liquorland.

• Thursday 4th of February - Wine Vault Grey Lynn 4.00PM - 6.30PM
• Friday 5th of February - Warkworth Super Liquor 3.30PM - 6.00PM
• Friday 12th 0f February - Kingsland Liquor Centre 4.00PM - 7.00PM
• Friday 26th of February - Snells Beach Liquorland 3.30PM - 6.00PM

Put those dates in your dairy and I look forward to seeing you.  A map of locations are on our stockists page.

We’ve had a nice mention in the Rodney times for Boom and a bit of a profile of myself. Unfortunately the article is not on line but below is a photo I took of the page.

I was going through some older posts just now and found some with the dreaded ” where there should be a “. I must apologize for this and a few similar problems with the older material on this site.

The problem stems from an update of Wordpress I did a bit over a year ago that also changed the way the posts are encoded as character sets (or something) on the database. There is so much info on here now that I’m a little scared to use a find and replace program so I’ve been sorting it out manually when I find them.

Apologies in advance.

Rather belatedly I realised a wines of the decade list might be in order. I actually got the idea from Ant Timpsons 50 Films of the decade, however 50 is a lot and 10 has been really hard as it is.

All of the wines in this list I have drunk, and I mean actually drunk and enjoyed, not just tasted.  Not the whole bottle, but at least a glass or two with a meal. Of course it also reflects what I have been drinking, so I don’t claim this to be a best ever list. As I don’t buy much in the way of US wine(very expensive here) or Burgundy or Rhone or Tuscany etc, etc.

The list is not in any particular order except the first two which were on another planet!

Anyway for what it’s worth here’s my top ten wine I drank over the last decade.

1. 1953 Chateau Margaux; Profoundly good. Talking to others that have been lucky enough to try it probably one of the best wines ever made.
2. 1934 Mouton Rothschild; Wasn’t expecting much with this as we were expecting it to be over the hill. But it wasn’t. It was absolutely amazing!! Over a two hour period the wine continually transformed from one aroma to another. At one point I swear that it smelt like freshly squeezed orange juice. Totally amazing.
3. 1976 Chateua d’Yquem; Had this at a Chinese restaurant with a client and a few other people, the whole dinner was super weird but the 76 d’Yquem wasn’t. Ultra concentrated beautifully balanced and hardly any discernible age. Stunning wine despite the occasion and the rubbish glasses. FYI, Sweet and sour pork dosen’t work with Ch Palmer 1983.
4. 1982 Champagne Salon; Probably the angriest wine I have ever tried. Amazing acid, potency and persistence, I could still taste it the following morning. Now that’s length!
5. Sauzet Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru  Les Combettes 1999; Should be Grand Cru
6. 2001 Fontanafreda La Rosa Barolo; Notes from the time, layer upon layer of cigar box, rose, violet, cherry, plums and a hint of citrus. Massive tannins and with massive flavour matching the nose with an addition of cocoa. Fantastic palate length and it lingers and lingers.
7. Bollinger 1955; Bought this at auction for $55. Thought it would be knackered. The bottled looked bad. The cork also inspired little confidence. However the wine was stunning. It had lost most of its pressure but the wine was terrific, very complex if a little oxidative. The strength of flavour is the impression that still lives with me.
8. Rene Rostaing 1998 Cote Rotie Cote Blonde; I use to work for the New Zealand importer of this wine and tried it just after it arrived, it was sensational. Beautifully aromatic, almost exotic and the richness of the palate, wow. The crazy thing though was a number of clients had a high rate of bad bottles. It wasn’t cork taint it was more like random bacterial spoilage which made the wines quite horrific. Normally in such cases clients would return all of the wines particularly at $120 a bottle. In this case not a single bottle came back, the good bottles were too good and no one wanted to risk losing one.
9. 1990 Bollinger RD magnum; Champagne is better in magnums and not just because there is twice as much as normal bottles. The larger bottles just have an x factor. We drunk this about two years after disgorgement. I beleive timing of drinking  is important with the RD series.
10. Machesi di Gresy Barbaresco Martinenga 2004; I love Nebbiolo (the grape Barberesco and Barolo are produced from) particularly when it’s grown near the town of Alba. Balance, finesse, power and stunning  aromatics. The aromatics are so seductively light and ethereal with this wine you are just not prepared for the flavour and tannin onslaught that follows. Just sensational.

Sue Courtney who writes the Wine of The Week Blog  and  Wine of the Week website has reviewed the 2008 Boom Pinot Gris. Click here for the link through to the review.

Here’s a little sneak peak of what she says.

“Fizz thunders from the bottom of the glass with millions of bubbles racing each other to explode on the surface. There are hints of vanilla poached pear on the nose and crisp fresh flavours in the palate.”

Get over there and check the rest of the review as well as the rest of Sue’s site as well. Heaps of good information and other reviews. www.wineoftheweek.com/blog/

I really like to see innovative or just plain different labels. Unfortunately New Zealand producers have been dragging the chain in this regard. Most of our labels are fairly safe and conservative just like the names. Until now that is!

I saw these three a couple of weeks ago. The Catalina Sounds isn’t really that different except it is a one piece label. I thought The Curio is really quite cool though.

This time of year people usually publish lists of the best and worst of whatever, so why not jump on the band wagon and do one myself if not a little late.

Wine of the year

Your probably thinking I’ll say Boom. Whilst it’s very good, it would seem a little biased ;). So, my actual wine of the year…. I can’t tell you about. This particular wine and it’s category are already expensive enough and need no more promotion (If it gets any more expensive I won’t be able to afford it).

So we will will go to number 2, which is Dom Perignon 1975. Moet’s Dom is an superb wine that really needs a good period of aging to see what it is truly capable of. See my notes from the original post for the details.