Be pre-warned, there’s what will appear to be a slant rant contained somewhere in this post. Apologies in advance! Long and short of it was another great week for me in terms of learning more and more about the world of wine, and I hope any of you guys who got involved can say the same!
Alsace is absolutely stunning. For anyone who hasn’t been, find an excuse and go. You’ve got the steep Vosges Mountains right next to the Rhine River basin, which leads to stunning natural scenery, old school Franco-Germanic architecture making it look like a Disney set, and of course a load of fantastic wines!
I had a really top time on my stag do. I’d not been all that well, so my best man decided to do a foodie themed trip, rather than tying me to anything in Leeds city centre. So off we went to San Sebastian. Still up there as one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. And Verdejo was a constant companion!
As I’m writing the title I’m thinking it’s a bit of a stupid post really. South Africa produces a lot of Chenin Blanc from all over the country. Some are from premium producers, some not-so premium. Point is the tastes, textures, and general variety of wines is probably that little bit more than me writing a small blog post is going to be able to handle.
I was half wondering whether to just cut and paste the old one here, but that’d be just a bit too lazy, right? Instead I’ll just recap it in a briefer way. Anything that doesn’t make sense is probably (hopefully) better explained in the posts during NWTW Week 8 when we did Pinotage.
With Ant off sunning himself in Devon you’ve got me for a couple of weeks now. Last week’s Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon is topping the charts so far this year, with a whopping 8.8/10 average. Thanks to everyone who voted.
For my pick this week I’m staying in the New World, and I want to have another go at the often maligned Chenin Blanc from South Africa.
I have to say I’m loving doing New Wine This Week. I think before this week I’d had maybe one or two Cabernet Sauvignons from Coonawarra way, and probably just passed them off as a nice drop that I wouldn’t mind having again once every now and again. It’s when you actually make yourself sit and think about it, what do I like or not like about this wine? There was very little I didn’t like.
Before I start going off on a different idea all together, let’s just make one thing clear. If you like your steak, then just have one. Nicely grilled, not too well done. A dollop of butter to baste it. It’ll be superb with such a big wine like this.
For me though, I fell in love with lamb chump when we had it the other week with Pinotage. Done the right way it’ll be great with the wines.
If you’ve been following either myself or Ant on twitter this week you’ll have seen how many people are lovers of this wine. I haven’t seen Ant all week, but I can hear him giggling with glee in anticipation of popping some corks this week. And rightly bloody so. As I said in an earlier post, Cabernet Sauvignon from Coonawarra has become a New World Classic!
But why?
Australia’s vineyard areas are pretty much exclusively towards the south coast of the country. To be fair it’s where near as damn it most of the people are too. You ever been to the Northern Territory? Size of UK, France, and Spain put together and the population is something daft like 200,000, of which 150,000 live in Darwin, the main city. Beautiful place, mind!
