Thursday 3 June 2010

Occursus

No updates recently, sorry, been extremely busy at work and home. Revising hard for my WSET exam in a couple of weeks. It's going to be tough. Have a lot of facts to learn and I've never been good at that. Add in some maths WSET! Still been drinking wine, just not writing about it.

Got a couple of fancy ones I wanted to mention. A few weeks ago we had our first bottle of the Pomerol we got on our wine list. The people who gave it to us came for dinner and were given the option of drinking it or waiting a few years... so we opened it!

It was the Chateau la Croix de Gay 2002, and was delicious. Rich, spicy, earthy, smooth with loads of fruit. It'll keep for another good few years so I'm really looking forward to drinking the rest as they develop.

I also ventured into the Nicolas in Henley for the first time the other day. Ostensibly to find something from the Rhone to use as a mystery wine*. In the end I came a way with an Occursus Toques et Clochers 2001, which is a Vin de Pays (de la Haute Vallée de l'Aude) with a really intriguing blend of Southern French and Bordeaux grapes. It was big rich smooth and fruity. Really good!

Considering how much I loved the Pomerol I don't know why the traditional French wines never really seem to excite me as much as something more unusual when I'm in the shop. The Pomerol was clearly the better of these two, which were both excellent.

*as part of our WSET exam we have to do a scored blind tasting, so we've been practicing. Which involves drinking nice wine.