Long, but eminently readable – this is an excellent article on the Koch/fakes/Rodenstock saga as it unfurls…
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By billn on August 28, 2007 #asides#other sites
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chablis 2006 tisserandes
2006 Chablis Les Tisserandes
This is a cheap cuvée sold each year and bottled for the Co-op in Switzerland – I don’t know who by – almost always on a special offer and in this case for just under 10 Swiss francs – about £4 or €7. Each year I buy a bottle, but rarely more – in such a vintage as 2005 it was somehow watery and inconsequential – how could they have made a decent in in 2006? Don’t expect miracles at this price-point, but this is actually not bad. Medium pale green-yellow. A wide if faint, but interesting high-toned nose. Clean, well textured with a very nice crescendo of acidity coming into the mid-palate. Medium length. What helps this wine deliver is that acidity – it works rather well. If I have a party this is worth considering, though for my house wine I’d still rather pay the 50% extra and go for the Drouhin Chablis or the Jadot.
Rebuy – Maybe
Afterwards I drank a lovely 2001 Krossfelder (a Coop) Alsace Riesling that cost little more than this Tisserandes – it was intense, balanced and tasty – a far better wine.
vitis vinifera/pinot noir genome unravelled
The finished sequence is the work of a consortium of French and Italian researchers led by Patrick Wincker, a geneticist based at Genoscope — the French national genetic-sequencing facility in Evry. Full analysis of the more than 30,000 genes contained within the sequence could aid breeding strains with novel flavours or better pest resistance. Source
Link to the project at the Centre National de Séquençage. Clearly the PFVini will be unhappy!
potel 99 bourgogne maison dieu
1999 Nicolas Potel, Bourgogne Maison Dieu
Medium, medium-plus ruby-red colour. The nose is deep, with dark oak coating more distant baked red cherry, topped by higher-toned alcoholic notes. Initially good acidity starts to turn a little bright in the mid-palate and even faintly bitter as it runs into the finish – but I’m being picky here. To focus purely on the acidity ignores reasonably well grained tannin and ripe, oak coated fruit. This remains an above average and quite young bourgogne that is pretty well balanced and still needs a couple more years in the cellar – I decided it would always retain its oaky base, but to prove me wrong, on day two the remnants were largely free of it and very nice.
Rebuy – Maybe
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The trails and tribulations front of house…
The top restaurants; pole dancing, vomiting “happens all the time”, sex in the washroom – no it’s busy, let’s try under the table…
le montrachet, j-f bazin (1990)
“At first it seems ridiculous to devote a whole book to a few acres of stony hillside, owned through the ages by an ever-changing, ever-squabbling gang of greedy rustics, producing a mere 30,000 bottles of wine per year.”
So starts the foreward by Nicolas Faith who edited this English translation of Jean-François Bazin’s 1988 publication in French, Le Montrachet, and it’s about the only tongue-in-cheek moment in the whole book. Don’t let that put you off. Despite the profiles of the domaines that own parts of Montrachet (or it’s hyphenated neighbours) being 20 years out of date, this 190 page book is worth any second-hand purchase you might find.
Bazin meticulously works his way through the history of the area and the families that owned parts of the vineyard, what was Montrachet and what tried to be Montrachet. This translation of his French text original is very well done and reads easily. I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes:
Showing that counterfeiting is as old as the sun:
“In 1822 André Jullien wrote: “Meursault… produces many highly appreciated white wines which, as they leave the area, often take on the name of the wines of Mont-Rachet which they resemble to some degree, though they do not have all their fine quality.” A century earlier, 1728 the priest Arnoux warned his readers against “the vines which are neighbours to that vineyard, for they somewhat resemble it in quality and sometimes pass for Montrachet”. “That is why you should be sure of having a trustworthy agent if you wish to procure some”, he advises.”
Finally, did someone mention squabbling rustics?
“It is probable that the strange greenish-yellow colour of Montrachet deepened along with progress in vinification and preservation of wines. In the eighteenth century it doubtless had the transparent palour of a young priest at court. Greenish-gold? Chablis and Pouilly-Fuissé also claim this mysterious blend of colour and its reflections. Yellow? “No” they say in Chassagne “Puligny is yellow.” Yellow? “No” they say in Puligny “Meursault is yellow.” “
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- Adding fuel to the bottle replication fire, this is an excellent piece.
- Snails, hired women, Paris Hilton, Tina Turner, Pommard and Ketchup – in that order!
- And this I like very much – Chateau Pétrogasm
- Finally, does (should) wine have a gender?
dujac 95 clos de la roche
1995 Dujac, Clos de la Roche
The colour is starting to take on a shade of mahogany, not perfectly bright – but see through. Aromatically it’s about heavy stems over pretty red fruit – cherry, strawberry and raspberry – and a little ‘raised’ balsamic impression. The palate is well textured and apart from a little extra width and intensity in the mid-palate, the wine is about understated, balanced delivery. The finish is almost good – no more. I think my last bottle was 3-4 years ago, the colour is a little older and the tannin is softer. Certainly very good, but my expectation is for outstanding.
Rebuy – Maybe
website hosting debacle – advice
First thanks for all your patience, I recieved 407 emails from ‘readers’ to tell me I had a site problem – it lasted just a few hours short of seven days – sorry I couldn’t reply to you all, I was trying to focus my corresondence on fixing the problem:
So how about a little advice to web-hosts?
- When the connection to databases fails on a server, it would be best let all the people housed on that server know by (mass) email, do not do nothing. Afterwards try to avoid the following:
- Do not wait 2 days to reply to user’s increasingly frustrated requests for info
- Do not tell users that their lack of website has been assigned ‘medium priority’
- After user has emailed the managing director to find out what is happening, do not reply saying ‘what do you expect, we don’t work weekends’
- Do not say that there will be a solution ‘today, or tomorrow – if it works’ and when it doesn’t work say nothing (again)…
They fixed it this morning, it took ~7 days. If anyone wants to offer me a great deal on a QUALITY windows hosted environment together with a MySQL database, drop me a line.
Cheers and thanks again
Bill