Drink Whisky, save the planet?

Some people at Edinburgh Napier University worked out that you can use whisky by-products to produce bio-fuels. I wonder if it makes your car smell peaty?

http://www.decanter.com/news/301105.html?aff=rss

Tokaji aged whisky?

I was recently pointed to this exciting sounding whisky by someone off of the internet. A 14 year old Islay, aged in Tokaji barrels? Oooh. How can I resist. I almost instantly ordered a bottle. It arrived yesterday.

The first impression you get is the amazing smell, it is incredibly strong and rich. It fills the room with a sweet, heady, smoky aroma which lingered long after I'd finished my glass. You don't really need to drink it. Just sit in the room with a glass of it.

The colour is a really dark amber, like an aged Bourbon. It's really thick and viscous, it makes you want to swirl it around the glass.

On the palate it's very different to a more traditional Islay. It is subtly peaty, smoky and earthy but they are more background flavours, the really rich and sweet dried fruit and apricot flavours of Tokaji dominate. I've had a Glenmorangie before that was aged 15 years, 5 of which were in Sauternes wood and that was much lighter and more subtle. This kind of smashes you in the face with Tokaji flavour, the whisky is a bit more in the background.

It won't be to everyones taste, I read someone else on the interweb saying they hated it and thought the Tokaji flavour totally overpowered the Whisky. I think it's a marriage that works really well, but in many ways it's more like a very good Bourbon than an Islay. For those reasons it's not going to be to everyone's taste.

I wonder if there is any more coming in future years? I hope so. This was limited to 492 bottles.

Divers find, and drink, 220 year old champagne

This is a superb story, some divers off the coast of Finland found some old Champagne at the bottom of the ocean, believed to be 1782-1788 Cliquot, so they cracked a bottle open and drank it!

That's what I'd do.

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.

Mmmatetic

Drinking the 2007 Matetic Coralillo Winemaker's blend, it's delicious. big, fat soft ripe, fruity. Bought it from oddbins who don't seem to have it on website any more. Majestic have the 2005/6 at 20% off though! Might have to get some.

Two Buck Chuck

We've heard a lot about Two Buck Chuck, partly thanks to Oz Clark and James May, so it was definitely on the tasting list while in California.

The friends we are staying with have a few different varietes and decided to give us a blind taste.

Our tasting had black fruit, hints of chocolate and lots of tannin and tasted quite young and green. As my Dad would put it, it's "very gluggable" (easy to drink). Three of us guessed what it was, and we came up with different answers (2 guesses for Shiraz, and I plumped for Merlot).

We were all wrong, it turned out to be Cabernet Sauvignon.

Mike's note:- it tasted like generic cheap red wine, but it did taste a tiny bit spicy hence taking a total guess at Shiraz. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was merlot or cabernet, and I wasn't when it was. After finding out what it was I did think it tasted a bit of Ribena but that might be the power of suggestion.

Sonoma Part 5 - Cline Cellars

Our last stop for the day was Cline Cellars, set in some very pretty gardens.

Here, the tasting menu has around 15 wines which are free to try. The menu says you can try 5 of these but as our very helpful guide Rene put it "no-one really counts". Following this are a further 8 or so which cost $1 each, which is waived if you buy any of the wines.

In the end we tried 13 different wines.

First up was a 2009 Viognier which was drier than expected, with peach and apricot flavours and a nice crisp finish.

We skipped over the rest of the whites and went straight for the 2008 Ancient Vines Carignane, tasting of red fruit and plum, with a peppery finish.

The 2007 Cashmere was next. This is a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mouvedre and tasted of rich red fruit with hints of chocolate, and the slight spiciness we were coming to realise features in many Californian wines.

Next we had another Ancient Vines bottle, the 2008 Mouvedre, which had lots of rich ripe chery fruit, a nice bit of spice and the smokiness you expect from Mouvedre.

A trio of Syrahs followed, starting with the 2007, a wine with cherry flavours and a hint of spice.
We compared this side by side with the 2007 Cool Climate Syrah which was much more intense, tasting quite jammy and with blueberry and blackberry flavours. The final one of our trio was the 2006 Los Carneros Syrah which was even richer still, with even more jammy richness and blueberry flavours and some oak. Rene told Mike he had "a very good nose" when he picked up on the French oak.

Zinfandel was next and we tasted 5 in a row, starting with the 2008. This had flavours of berry fruits, particularly raspberry and a nice hint of black pepper spice. The 2008 Ancient Vines Zinwas richer and darker, tasting more jammy and with more black fruit flavours, but still with hints of raspberry and a slightly sweet finish.
The 2008 Big Break Zin had flavours of cherries and black fruit, and a really interesting herbaceous, eucalyptus smell to it. When we mentioned this to Rene we discovered the vineyard is surrounded by eucalyptus trees.
The 2007 Live Oak Zin had a sweet edge to it, with lots of black cherry flavour and a bit of spice.
Finally, we tried the 2007 Heritage Zin which is a blend of the Big Break, Live Oak and also Bridgehead (which we didn't taste). This was delicious, rich and intense spice, with dried fruit flavours which reminded me of Christmas pudding.

We finished up the tasting with a 2006 Late Harvest Mouvedre which was really good, tasting of raisins and rich sweet spice.

A bottle each of the Heritage Zin and the Mouvedre were added to our growing collection as we left.