Vertical drinking
Apr. 29th, 2007 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Last night we visited friends for a celebratory birthday and housewarming dinner. We started with the tour of the new house: a nineteenth century terraced house with spacious rooms, many original features (including window shutters and some seriously ornate plasterwork) a very desirable attic and a small back yard which is already full of flowers. "This will have to go,"said Helen, showing us into the master bedroom, one whole wall of which consisted of fitted cupboards - worse, of mirrors which form the sliding doors of the fitted cupboards. And she slid back the door, revealing the wine rack.
Despite stashing her wine in the wardrobe, Helen is a wine professional, and we drank some delicious wines: two sparkling wines and a rosé from English winery Chapel Down, and three clarets from different years from Château Laniote - not hard to guess, this one, since this is an old friend. And a dessert wine from the Coteaux de Layon, all fruit and burnt honey.
My palate is not, by a long way, in this class - and it's just as well, as my purse isn't either. But I'm chastened to note that of the Chapel Down sparklers, I preferred the cheaper - all freshness and fizz - to the more expensive wine, whose more complex flavours didn't sit so well, to my taste, with the sparkling wine; and of the Saint Emilion, I preferred the 1995, while the experts agreed that the 2001 was far superior.
Despite stashing her wine in the wardrobe, Helen is a wine professional, and we drank some delicious wines: two sparkling wines and a rosé from English winery Chapel Down, and three clarets from different years from Château Laniote - not hard to guess, this one, since this is an old friend. And a dessert wine from the Coteaux de Layon, all fruit and burnt honey.
My palate is not, by a long way, in this class - and it's just as well, as my purse isn't either. But I'm chastened to note that of the Chapel Down sparklers, I preferred the cheaper - all freshness and fizz - to the more expensive wine, whose more complex flavours didn't sit so well, to my taste, with the sparkling wine; and of the Saint Emilion, I preferred the 1995, while the experts agreed that the 2001 was far superior.
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Date: 2007-04-29 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 09:41 am (UTC)