STAR OF WONDER

Our Christmas tasting was on a December Friday in Farnborough, courtesy of Ian and Kathryn.  They hosted fourteen of us Tongham Tasters for a fine evening of wine food and conversation.  The theme was the Nativity and all wines were named after what you might find in your Nativity scene.  Being our Christmas party and as there were fourteen of us we had eight wines and a bonus at the end for our dessert.

All our wines had names featuring the Nativity

So that we could admire the names and pictures on the bottles we did not taste the wines blind; I note that this is becoming a habit of ours of late.  We also did not use our usual twenty point scoring system, as we wanted to be less serious than usual.  Apart from rating the wines our challenge was to try and guess the price of each bottle.

Our excellent hosts

Cous cous with chicken and preserved lemon

The food served was the usual gourmet section.  A gorgonzola panna cotta with chutney and walnuts, goats cheese toasts, cous cous with chicken and preserved lemon, venison sausages, devils on horseback, cheese board and homemade mince pie flavoured ice cream with madeira cake. Well done to the chefs!

The recipe for the gorgonzola, honey and chutney pannacotta is on Jane's blog Whyisthereair.com.

Venison sausage anyone?

We had a real selection of ages at this tasting – everything from under twenty to ninety!

So how did we rate our Christmas wines?   They are presented below in descending order of preference:

1. L’Etoile de Romanin, 2007, Les Baux de Provence, Denis Dubourdieu, French Red 14%, Marks & Spencer £13.99.

L’Etoile was the star of the evening, not surprising considering its name in French means star.   This interesting Provencal blend of Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Syrah, Carignan and Cinsault got nine of our votes as the best wine of the evening.  A big full-bodied wine with bags of flavour – a lovely Christmas hug from the South of France.  Highly recommended by most of our team who also thought it great value.

2. Two Hands “Angels’ Share”, 2011, McLaren Vale, Australian Red 15%, Majestic £18.00.

Almost everyone had this wine in their top three wines of the evening, even if it wasn’t actually anybody’s favourite.   This Aussie Shiraz had both big fruit flavour and complexity.    It was the most expensive wine of the evening and thus not surprisingly was well received.  Although we all liked it, none of guessed it cost anything like its price tag and thus we couldn’t rate it as good value. This could be one for lovers big Australian Shiraz and are willing to pay nearly £20 for it.

3. Hewitson, Baby Bush 2010, Barossa Valley Mourvedre, Australian Red, Berry Bros & Rudd £17.25.

Our third favourite wine was also a red, this one a single varietal Mourvedre from cuttings of very old stock.  It has that typical Mourvedre taste, very similar to a French Bandol made with the same grape, but it was a touch sweet and also a little thin on my palate.  Nevertheless it got two of our teams vote as top wine and half of us had it in our top three.  However, we again didn’t get anywhere close to the price tag when guessing how much Ian paid for it.  The days of good value Australian wine is long gone with current exchange rates.

4. Shepherd’s Ridge, Sauvignon Blanc 2011, Wither Hills, New Zealand White, Marks and Spencer £9.99.

The top white wine of the evening was a very well received New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc made for Marks and Spencer for Wither Hills.  I thought it was an OK New Zealand white but not spectacular; some of the team disagreed as two of them voted it their favourite wine of the evening.  Certainly, not bad value at this price but I think M&S have sold out of this one.

5. Cave de St Desirat Saint Joseph, Northern Rhone 2009, French Red 12.5%, Marks and Spencer £13.99.

The reds were so good that this nice little Rhone number came bottom of the pile.  100% Syrah, it lacked the oomph of the other wines above it.  It went nicely with the food.  Not sure we could recommend this one at this price as most of us guessed it was under £10.

6. Villa Maria Lightly Sparkling Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand Sparkling White 2011 11.5%, Vickis in Chobham £8.00

This is a wine that has only recently been imported into the country.  I have heard wine experts like Jancis Robinson say that you should never put bubbles in Sauvignon Blanc.  The jury is probably still out on this one, although two of our team voted it in their top half of the wines we tasted.  It certainly was not bad; it was dry but perhaps lacked any real flavour.  The frizzante style fizz was however appealing.

Still smiling and 3 wines still to go!

7. Miranda Wisemen Chardonnay Semillon 2011, Australian White, Tesco £6.00.

This was our most controversial wine of the evening with three of us quite liking it and the others absolutely hating it.  This unfortunately seems the fate of most Chardonnay wines at our evenings.    I quite liked its taste but it had no smell and no length.  It was at least the cheapest wine of the evening and probably reasonable value if your like New World Chardonnay. 

8. Migual Torres, Las Mulas 2012, Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé, Chilean Rosé, Waitrose £8.99.

Our least popular wine of the evening with no top 5 votes was this Chilean rosé.  Most of us disliked its colour, it was also a little bit sweet and had what some of us described as a cheap synthetic cherry taste.   It did however add the mules or donkey to nativity scene!   An organic wine it didn’t resemble the description on the Waitrose website for us.

We ended the evening with a sweet Greek dessert wine sold by the Wine Society that was very pleasant.  After nine wines, thankfully we had a taxi to take us back to Tongham.   Thanks to the Stuarts for a great evening and especially for the lovely red wines and accompanying food and all the effort with the crackers etc.  Lets hope we can all keep this standard up in 2013 - now there's a challenge!

The pouring of our dessert wine

A yummy dessert

Clive

Thanks as usual to Clive for the photos.  As you can see some of us made a bit of an effort with our Christmas outfits.    Clive will be hosting our first wine tasting evening of 2013 on Friday January 11^th when he will be presenting us with six Sauvignon Blanc wines from around the World.  As usual, all are most welcome to join us at our wine tasting evenings.   Look up details above under Wine Circle if you haven’t joined us before.  As usual just bring along £10 and some glasses.  Should be a great evening for white wine lovers.

Sarah won the wine pricing competition

I end the year with a poem!

O star of wonder, O star of the night,

The reds were wonderful, the rosé a fright,

The Wisemen cometh but dost disappoint many,

The food was lovely and platefuls a plenty,

So thanks to the Stuarts for hosting so well,

Lots of wines to view, taste and smell,

So it’s just left to wish you all a Christmas great,

See you all again on January 11^th at eight.

Here's to 2013!

WE WISH YOU A HAPPY AND VINOUS NEW YEAR.