Saturday, November 29th, 2008
29th November 2008
A large, enthusiastic gathering assembled for this year’s UGC Beijing tasting - showcasing the fabled 2005 vintage - at the Swissotel, Dongsishitiao.
The Bordeaux chateaux owners we spoke with all reported a great deal of interest in the 05 vintage as well as having to field some pretty penetrating questions (rather than the usual inquiries they’ve come to expect in China as to price and, well, price…).
Even with the Hilton Food & Wine Experience taking place the same day, this was far the larger crowd-drawer; and involved the odd moment of determination just to get around even a sample of the wines.
In Part 1 we covered all of the 2005 Sauternes/Barsacs on offer. In this post we turn to what reds we could get near enough to taste!
For our reviews of the red 2004 vintage last year, click on the following links: Part IIIa, Part IIIb, Part IIIc, Part IIId.
Clearly, last year we got the chance to taste many more wines!
But here’s what we sampled of the red 2005s (click on links for full tasting notes):
From Saint Emilion:
Château Angélus, St. Emilion 2005
From Haut-Médoc:
Château La Lagune, Haut-Médoc 2005
From Margaux:
Château du Tertre, Margaux 2005
Château Giscours, Margaux 2005
From Saint Julien:
Château Langoa Barton, St. Julien 2005
Château Léoville Barton, St. Julien 2005
Château Léoville-Poyferré, St. Julien 2005
From Pauillac:
Château Pichon-Longueville Baron, Pauillac 2005
Château Pontet-Canet, Pauillac 2005
From St. Estèphe:
Château Phélan Ségur, St. Estèphe 2005
These wines are unsuprisingly for the long term and many will make excellent drinking from 2015 (in some cases, at the very earliest).
With luck, the merits of ageing these kinds of wines for future consumption will become better understood in China. Judging by the enthusiasm at this year’s UGC, the future bodes well for Bordeaux here, even given the current global economic crisis.
At least we know the 2005 vintage will be very good in the future.
Saturday, November 29th, 2008
29th November 2008
A large, enthusiastic gathering assembled for this year’s UGC Beijing tasting - showcasing the fabled 2005 vintage - at the Swissotel, Dongsishitiao.
The Bordeaux chateaux owners we spoke with all reported a great deal of interest in the 05 vintage as well as having to field some penetrating questions (rather than the usual inquiries they’ve come to expect in China as to price and, well, price…).
Even with the Hilton Food & Wine Experience taking place the same day, this was far the larger crowd-drawer; and involved the odd moment of determination just to get around even a sample of the wines.
But we did manage to taste all of the Sauternes/Barsacs on offer. A follow-up post on the 2005 reds can be read in Part 2.
Here’s what we tasted (click on links for full tasting notes):
Chateau Suduiraut, Sauternes 2005
Chateau Coutet, Sauternes 2005
Chateau La Tour Blanche, Sauternes 2005
Chateau Rayne-Vigneau, Sauternes 2005
Chateau Climens, Barsac 2005
Château Doisy-Daëne, Barsac 2005
Chateau Guiraud, Sauternes 2005
Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey, Sauternes 2005
Chateau de Fargues, Sauternes 2005
The 2005 Sauternes/Barsac vintage is clearly super-rich and many of these wines will need considerable ageing before they become approachable really.
Stand-out wines included Suduiraut, Climens, Coutet and La Tour Blanche (we expect Doisy-Daene to be very good too).
The very good 2004 vintage showed better this time last year, but it is still too early to say which will come out on top; and there’s a good chance both the 2004 and 2005 vintages will be impressive in the long term.
Friday, November 28th, 2008
28th November 2009
Coinciding with the arrival of the Bordelais in China for the Union des Grand Crus 2008 tour - which takes in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou this year - fledgling wine club Les Millesimes hosted a highly successful Bordeaux dinner and auction, attracting some top chateaux owners.
An impressive French menu (see below) generally matched very well with the following wines (click on links for full tasting notes):
Chateau Olivier (Blanc), Pessac-Leognan 2003
Chateau Grand-Mayne, St.-Emilion 2001
Chateau Olivier (Rouge), Pessac-Leognan 2003
Chateau Poujeaux, Moulis-en-Medoc 2004
Clos Fourtet, St. Emilion 2004
Chateau Angelus, St. Emilion 2000
The Menu:
Fine de Claire oysters on seaweed
Pan seared foie gras with marinated duck breast, figs stewed in red wine and ginger and pumpkin chips
Oven-roasted chicken stuffed with homemade Chorizo
Australian Kobe-style beef rib eye served with potato gratin, arugula salad and Bordelaise sauce
Deep-fried walnut-crusted Camembert with mango salad
Trio of chocolate desserts
There were some lovely wines here, the Olivier Blanc, Grand-Mayne and Angelus showing particularly well.
At our table, organizer and Bordeaux-educated Ma Jun oversaw the ensuing auction with the owners of all the above properties watching closely (Fongyee translating for Anne Cuvelier of Chateau Leoville Poyferre who also joined the party).
Among the auction highlights, two mixed four-bottle presentation packs of Chateaux Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton-Rothshild, Cheval Blanc and Margaux (all from the 2000 vintage) reached 60,000RMB and 65,000RMB respectively.
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
25th November 2008
Several months ago, at a Sauternes dinner in Hong Kong (click here for post), Fongyee casually mentioned to Christian Seely, Head of AXA Millesimes, the idea of introducing the joys of fine wine to some of China’s most promising students.
Citing the good fortune of students at Oxford and Cambridge, who do have the opportunity to be exposed to top Bordeaux, Burgundy and the like, Fongyee and Seely pondered what a difference it would make to China’s budding student population to get a taste of some of the very best.
On Tuesday evening, 150 students at China Agricultural University – the vast majority of whom are enrolled on Prof. Ma Huiqin’s popular oenology and wine appreciation programme – experienced a dream come true.
Aymeric de Gironde (pictured top), Head of the AXA-controlled and legendary Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron, had shipped to China a whole array of AXA’s best wines: vintages of Chateau Petit Village, Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron, Chateau Suduiraut and various Ports from the superb Quinta do Noval.
On tasting were (click on links for full tasting notes):
Chateau Petit Village, Pomerol 2004
Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron, Pauillac 2004
Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron, Pauillac 2001
Chateau Suduiraut 1999
Quinta do Noval 10 Year Old Tawny
Quinta do Noval Traditional Late Bottled Vintage 2001
Monsieur de Gironde pitched his introduction to AXA Millesimes at exactly the right level for a group already familiar with basic viticulture and vinification, but uninitiated in the delights of Pomerol, Pauillac, Sauternes, their respective terroirs and the special conditions of the Douro.
With Prof. Ma translating, the students hung on every word. A delightful evening was rounded off with a quick quiz in which the first students to answer questions about Right Bank grape varieties and the type of rot responsible for Sauternes, were awarded with bottles of Petit Village and Suduiraut.
But perhaps the most revealing moment was when Aymeric de Gironde suggested AXA Millesimes might assist Prof. Ma in establishing a working stock of wine for her courses and programmes.
Our thanks go to Aymeric de Gironde, Christian Seely and everyone at AXA Millesimes for making this wonderful evening possible: a tasting these students will never forget.
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
We recently received a congratulary email from Pamela Heiligenthal of Enobytes who has compiled a Top 100 list of wine blogs via Google indexing and some enterprising research of her own.
Heiligenthal explains: ‘I created the “Google Top 100 Wine Blog” list by simply typing in a simple key term “wine blog” in the Google search engine. I then removed content that did not meet certain criteria, excluding blogs that haven’t been updated in over 3 months or websites that simply list other blogs.
I also excluded blog directories, redirects, subsets or duplicates and blogs that heavily focus on content other than wine. There are a lot of blogs that call themselves a wine blog but focus more on things like travel, sports, etc., and I also excluded product type wine blogs (e.g. subzero refrigeration)’.
The Dragon Phoenix Wine Blog weighed in at 75, not bad for a fledgling venture by a pair of wine writers just learning the ropes of Wine Web 2.0.
We have a long way to go, of course, particularly with blogging bells and whistles.
But it’s heartening to have some endorsement in terms of content and ‘findability’ on the web, particularly from such pioneers (Enobytes is one of the first sites to generate wine maps from Google Earth among other innvoations).
To read the Top 100 list and Pamela Heiligenthal’s full report, click here.
Friday, November 7th, 2008
7th November 2008
Links China is a welcome new arrival to the Beijing market, a company already established in Hong Kong and Macau with some impressive wines from the likes of Domaine Laroche, Villa Cafaggio, Gonzalez Byass and most recently Champagne house Billecart-Salmon of Mareuil-sur-Ay fame.
Antoine Roland-Billecart, on his first visit to Beijing, was in person to present his wines, along with Victor Riberiro and Aladin Laroussi of Links who had organized a sumptuous menu at Jaan, one of the city’s top restaurants and centrepiece of the Raffles Beijing.
On tasting were (click on links for full tasting notes):
Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve
Served with pan-fried foie gras on cepe ravioli with a morel emulsion
Billecart-Salmon Grand Cuvee 1996
Served with slow-cooked scampi in nage followed by roast chicken with wild rice risotto
Billecart-Salmon Brut Rose
Served with a trio of desserts
All of these Champagnes are of high, in some cases, very high quality. It’s a pleasure to see them in Beijing where, sadly, too many Sunday brunches are awash with average, sometimes below average Champagnes (which will hardly incite local Chinese consumers to respect the region, struggling as they do with wines of higher acidity in any case).
The Brut Reserve and Brut Rose are ideal to drink now. The 1996 is clearly very special, but still something of a baby, illustrating the intense acidity of the vintage but with enough extract and concentration of complex autolytic flavours for the long term.
I would personally avoid serving rose Champagnes with desserts, but it was a very high quality menu all round. Links China follows on the heels of Watson’s in bringing decent new wines to the Beijing and wider mainland Chinese markets.
