The answer is ‘None, none more intense’.

Riesling Auslese Kiedrich Grafenberg 2005, Weingut Robet Weil
The nose of this is utterly refined and pure. Sure, it is really minerally and vineyardy, but it just reeks of super-focussed citrus fruit. Amazing, stunning and intense. And yet, it is really buxom, ripe and fruity enough to charm absolutely everyone. A lovely, lovely nose. The palate is really rather sweet, but there is stunning acidity here. The citrus fruit character is amazing. It is super-mineral action on the finish. Incroyable, as my French chums would have us say. The stunning, stunning balance and complexity are truly mind-bendingly wonderful. Super lovely. A long, hilarious life in front of it. I want… no, need a half bottle of this every week for the next 15 years of my life.

I just thought it would be fun to record me raving about a couple of wines and see if I said anything amusing. I suppose I did in the last one. Click the bottle to play the mp3.

Cote-Rotie Classique 2005, Clusel-Roch

It was an amazing wine, one of my very favourite Cote-Roties along with such producers as Jamet, Burgaud, Jasmin and possibly others…

This is an audio tasting note, recorded in the heat of battle. Click on the bottle to play the podcast.

Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru les Pucelles 2005, Domaine Henri Boillot

There will be another audio tasting note tomorrow.

I swiped this from the partner’s collection whilst he is in Estonia. Sssshhhh! Don’t tell him! I need wine for my guest. This is not quite, at least on the nose, what I was expecting.

Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos 2005, Jean-Paul & Benoit Droin
This is one of the most golden-hued Chablis I’ve seen since I had a really oxidised bottle last. Now that smells as if it is going down the oxidised/nutty path. Nice, very good indeed, but worryingly mature. This nose reminds me very much of two wines: Firstly, Salon 1996. The second thing this smells similar to was a bottle of Raveneau Premier Cru Chablis 1998 I had on my 30th birthday. I remember it because my chum James opened it blind for a bunch of us and we all said it was terribly serious Savennieres. Much as I like Savennieres, I’m not too keen on my Chablis smelling like it. The palate is properly good, but you get the sense that its light is starting to flicker and fade. Good minerality, certainly, with the remains of some peary, lemony fruit. Good length, too. Good Savennieres character… hmmm… I cannot believe such a serious 2005 Grand Cru Chablis has aged so quickly without some external factor affecting it. Its been in the flat for six months. Keep yours better than we have kept ours… bugger…

The Elitist Review editorial team took a visit to the London Wine and Spirits Trade Fair last Thursday. Here we are:

In that picture we are drinking tasting Taylor’s 1985, which was quite delicious. Very soft, mature and accessible, I thought. Mentzendorff also had some Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas 2001 which was terribly impressive, quite fiery though. The Henriques and Henriques Madeiras slipped down an absolute treat, the 15 year old Bual and Malmsey especially. Bollinger is always good, although I was not so impressed with the 2000 vintage, seemed a touch diffuse. There were some wonderful Hidalgo wines on offer including an intriguing 1986 vintage-dated Oloroso sherry which I got the last slug of and thought was just great.

Over at the Liberty Wines stand it was good to try the most recent offerings from Jaboulet. They had a new winemaker for the 2006 vintage and I though the Crozes Thalabert 2006 was particularly good; a real return to quality. Their new labels were bloody awful, though. 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling was frighteningly acidic, but serious Riesling. Cepparello 2005 was there, bottled in a screwcap which pleased me. It was a touch austere, though.

On the German wine institute stand we tried some good stuff. Dr Loosen 2008s seemed hilariously acidic, but with good fruit. Indeed, this seemed very much the story of the 2008 vintage in Germany, acidic but fruity. Some Leitz 07s were drinking very well (apart from Ein Zwei Dry which was bloody awful) and an 04 from them had survived better than I would expect from Leitz. Donnhoff 07s were totally wonderful and an 05 Oberhauser Brucke Auslese warped my mind even further with its loveliness.

Daniel dropped by a wine stand he thought suited him:

Weight Watcher’s wine, what a vile idea.

On the spirits side I tried some surprisingly drinkable sparkling vodka, some terribly nice pre-mixed cocktails from New Zealand, some properly good vodka about which an interesting film is being made (good stuff that Zorokovich, I was impressed) and some absinthe:

My final piece of hilarity for the day was that a couple of people came up to me at various points and told me how much they liked Elitist Review and that they were regular readers. I was highly amused and thought it was good for the ego.

A large picture of me will do in the ego department too.

Many thanks to Jeff for the pictures.

I really enjoyed Domaine de Thalabert Crozes 2006 from Jaboulet at the wine trade fair on Thursday and, of course, every bottle of Graillot is a delight, but this is also a serious example of the appellation. Colombier Hermitage is what the clever lover of Hermitage buys these days.

Crozes-Hermitage ‘Cuvee Gaby’ 2004, Domaine du Colombier
The nose is bursting with peppery spiciness, lovely black fruit there too and the merest hint of dark chocolate. This is a properly complex Crozes on the nose. It is quite refined and elegant, could I mistake this for Cote-Rotie if served it blind? Possibly, possibly. There is real concentration to the palate, but again there is good refinement. The fruit is quite delicious. Indeed, the tightly integrated palate is all quite delicious. I’m terribly pleased with this, thanks Dan and Jeff for bringing it around. A quite lovely 2004 Crozes, I’d love to try (and age) some 2005.

If you are in London and you haven’t been to Collect yet, you need to get yourself over there this evening or tomorrow; it is wonderful. Clearly the best art fair I’ve ever been to, indeed better than it has been for years.

However, the story is of the acquisition of another beautiful thing. We drifted by the Adrian Sassoon stand and fell in love with a truly marvellous Rupert Spira bowl. It had to be ours. It is a stoneware bowl with an incised poem through black pigment over white glaze and it looks like this:

Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

We own a few pieces by him now, a truly gifted man. Do I prefer this to the Sarah-Jane Selwood pieces? I’d hate to commit myself…

Many thanks for taking the pictures, Dan.

Deuxieme Cru or village level, call it what you will as long as you call it totally delicious.

Meursault ‘Tessons Clos de Mon Plaisir’ 2004, Domaine Roulot
Oh what a beautiful nose! Honey and nuts, serious mineral complexity and super-classy style. This tickles my fancy in a completely pleasurable and slightly lewd manner. Oh yeah, this is what we like, alright. The palate is totally elegant and refined, with lovely fruit, quite buttock-clenchingly wonderful minerality and brilliant, vibrant acidity. The harmony is superb and the finish is very long. It has complexity in spades. I couldn’t really ask for much more from a bottle of supposedly village-level white Burgundy. I bloody love it. You would too if you tried it. Up for drinking but a long, happy future lies ahead.

Yesterday we were at Lord’s having a whale of a time watching England thrash the West Indies by ten wickets. Ha! We drank some good wine. We started off with a bottle of Gosset Grande Reserve which was totally lovely: weighty, dense and stylish. It had deposited more tartarate crystals than any bottle of fizz I had ever seen. I don’t mind this in the slightest, shows the wine hasn’t been mucked around with.

After lunch we popped a bottle of Morey Saint Denis 2004 from Domaine Dujac. My long-time reader may recall this was one of my candidates for the best village level Burgundy in my poll. I didn’t vote for it at the time, but after trying the 04 I feel I should have done; it was bloody marvellous. Great fruit, silky tannins, perfectly balanced acidity. A really serious village-level wine that delivered an incredible amount of pleasure. We both kept saying how much we were enjoying it. Peter, you were absolutely right, Dujac Morey provides so much happiness. It has done in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Well done the boys and girls at Dujac!

Further to my rant about the poor value of Bordeaux it has been suggested that we try and establish what are the best and worst value wines from France. This seems like time for a couple of polls.

Free Survey

Free Website Survey

For the Languedoc-Roussillon I am specifically thinking of Banyuls and brilliant Collioure, for Provence the key wine is wonderful, wonderful Bandol.

The second question is fabulously easy to answer, but the first? Hmmm… I’ll have to think about that a bit more.

For readers of my RSS feeds you’ll have to come to the site proper to vote, the polls don’t show up in the RSS feed.

I’m just engaged in a little exchange of text messages with a chum. He asks if he should buy 2005 Jamet Cote-Rotie for £20 a bottle. Brilliant wine at an extremely keen price; I told him to snap them up. He then asked about 2004 and I said that was a bit less interesting but worth a few bottles.

Then it occurred to me that there is absolutely no interesting Claret for £20 a bottle, certainly nothing as thrillingly, mind-bendingly delicious as Jamet 05 or even 04. Yet, those money-grabbing Bordelais who sell their tedious shite for £20 will be producing epic quantities of wine from their large estates, far more than Jamet will make from his tiny patches of Cote-Rotie, and have vastly lower production costs as well. Bordeaux is over-priced and dull; buying it only serves to further line the pockets of people who have too much money to start with.

In my review of Valvona and Crolla I had a go at the corkscrew issued to our waitress. Just so we can be abundantly clear, the kind of corkscrew she used, which is the worst kind in existence, looks like this:

The screw with the spike running down the middle just pulls the centre of the cork out. This is a totally useless kind of corkscrew, which no one should own. It should certainly not be issued to staff working in a cafe that prides itself on its wine.

I suppose this post will not be complete until I name a better kind of corkscrew. This one is just great:

A ‘Pullups’ two-stage job with a worm rather than a drill. You won’t go wrong with one of these.