Chateau Musar

Chateau Musar is a wine with which we have had a very long relationship. The wine was created with the passion of Gaston Hochar in 1930. His love of French wine and his studies in Bordeaux were brought over to the unique terroir of his homeland of Lebanon.

Grapes have been grown in Lebanon for 6000 years with many an ancient reference to wine drinking, but the industry has now had the additional influence of French grapes and techniques, hence the name “château”. The wine is unique and has become well respected. Gaston’s son, Serge, joined the business in 1959 and the wine lives on with a red, white and rose along with a second wine, which bears the family name of “Hochar”.

Spice is the key word with Musar, Lebanon is famous for its spice fields and the spice is the first thing that comes though on the nose. It’s one of my favourite things to watch someone try Musar for the first time, it is so different but so classic. It’s a heavy wine that goes well with red meats but is great on its own, in fact, it is at its best when in the company of like-minded wine lovers. The older it gets the younger it tastes.

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Kasteel Cru Rose

Being a great lover of Kasteel Cru (we used to buy it by the pallet load) I was surprised to have only just found out about the rose beer.

Kasteel Cru Rose is made the same way as the regular Kasteel Cru. Using champagne yeast, malted barley and the pure Alsace water but with the addition of elderberry and elderflower. The same iconic bottle is used (created for them by a champagne bottle manufacture) but with a pink label that I’m afraid to say gives it a girly look. Although it is arguably a very accessible beer for women that would not normally like beer, it is not sweet.

It is close to Kasteel Cru in taste although a little softer. The original, in my opinion, benefited from being served in a wine glass, because it kept the bubbles. Although this is also true of the rose, due the very pink hue of the drink a few of my customers prefer it in a straight glass, to remind themselves they are drinking beer.

While the regular Kasteel Cru is best at the start of the evening before moving on to other things, the Rose can be happily drunk all evening, although it is not a drink you can easily return to after a change.

Kasteel Cru

Brought into the bar a couple of years back, the beer gave me a new found interest in beer. With its wine credentials, the beer fitted Gales like a glove.

Although using champagne yeast and being from Alsace sounds like it going to be a gimmick, the beer is still a serious drink and its production methods and sensibility can easily be tasted as a real point of interest. Light, with fine bubbles, you would hardly guess it is as alcoholic as it is. The perfect beer to start the evening and a great drink to accompany a light fish starter.

The third key ingredient, apart from the malted barley and champagne yeast, is the local water. Alsace, as any wine lover will know, is famous for its Vosges Mountains. The same mountains that make for unique weather conditions are also a source of very pure water.

Highly recommended for anyone with a quest for new tastes and experiences or just someone looking for a quality, light tasting lager.

Taltarni T Series Sparkling

When the offer of buying this wine from one of our suppliers arose, Richard experienced a real blast from the past. Taltarni made the Brut Taché with we stocked in the very early days of the Wine Bar.

This is their entry level sparkling, but it spares none of the production quality of this well established Australian company. Wine has been planted on the plot of land since 1887 but the modern vineyard dates back to 1972. French influences are shown throughout their range but mostly in the sparkling, all of which use the traditional champagne method and French grape blends.

Made with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier it is a blend of 70% current vintage and 30% older wine, which has been aged in stainless steel and French oak barrels. Extremely refreshing and perfect for a celebration. The wine is the absolute best value we could give, amazing quality for a reasonable price. 

Taltarni Brut Tache

In its native Australia, Taltarni is a household name, famous for its high quality sparking wine. The Brut Taché, a wine we used to stock way back in the bar, is a class leader. Taché is French for ’stained’ and refers to the light salmon, rose hue of the wine. This is a blend of three sparkling wine varietals, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, sourced from cool climate vineyards in Victoria and Tasmania.

Light and refreshing with fine bubbles and a subtle peach edge, this wine is more elegant than regular brut fizz. It looks fantastic in a flute and I recommend it taken at the start of the meal with some strawberries.

Prima Riesling

A new wine from the long heritage of Riesling from Pewsey Vale. An early harvest wine, the grapes are picked 4 weeks before the rest of the vineyard when the sugar levels are just right. The wine created can be described as semi dry. An interesting “chalky” acid is balanced off with left over fruit sugars to make an fascinating, refreshing drink.

The other refreshing quality of the wine is its alcohol content at only 9.5%. It is very low in a time when most wine makers seems to be going the other way. It just means that we all have to enjoy more of it, I guess.

I have been lucky enough to have tasted some really old wines from Pewsey Vale at an event at the London Wine Trade Fair. The wines were very different but sublime. Their experimental history with different closures (this one uses the vino-lok closure ), means that they are confident that this wine will store and develop well for 5 – 15 years. Being only in their second release of this wine I look forward to seeing how the wine develops.  

Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Riesling

The first vineyard planted in Eden Valley, Pewsey Vale, is situated above the Barrosa in a cooler climate, ideal for a greater ripening. Planted in 1841 it truly was ahead of its time, many a grape was tried out there with the experimental Joseph Gilbert at the helm. His research helped the Australian wine industry become what it is today. Sadly, Australia’s Great Depression made the vineyard fall into disrepair.

On the discovery in 1961 that he had acquired the oldest vineyard in the region, Geoffrey Angas Parsons with his passion, along with knowledge from Wyndham Hill Smith, who knew what grapes grow best in the area, set about restoring the vineyard.

It has now become one of Australia’s leading Riesling producers, with this being the epitome of their wine making style.

Light lemon and limes show through on the pallet with a little tropical fruit. If cheap German

s of old have put you off tasting Riesling today, then this will make you sit up and take the grape seriously. Rieslings have long been my favourite wines to taste (you never know what you’re going to get) and I’ll “taste” this one over and over.

I visited Portugal and was lucky enough to be the guest of Ramos Pinto in 2005.

My friends and I above Bom Retiro

I, and an intrepid gang of wine industry friends, explored all four of the vineyards owned by Ramos and saw the port lodge in Porto. It was an amazing experience, one I won’t forget. We have had a long-standing relationship with the port house. Dad has been stocking the products for 20 years but that didn’t stop me from not knowing nearly enough about the product, or indeed port as a whole. So, with the knowledge that I was going to go on this trip I went on amazon and bought a couple of specialist books on the area and read them, then did my research on the internet.

Port is an area with lots of history and traditions. Port has a very British history and with names like Taylors, Croft and Cockburn it’s easy to believe. The British involvement came from the beginning of the 18^th century where a treaty between Britain and Portugal meant that wine could be shipped to the UK with low duty in return for cod fishing rights. At the same time, Britain was at war with France so Portugal became our main source of wine. It would often not make the long boat journey and so the process of fortifying it was born. Although there are lots of lovely stories of young wine being taken over in boats and the sailors spiking the wine with brandy and so creating port by mistake, this is almost certainly untrue but is a great romantic story for creating the slightly baffling process of making fortified wine.

Fortification of wine is, at its basic level, the process of stopping fermentation before all the sugar turns to alcohol. The process stops naturally at 12% – 15% when the alcohol level kills off the living yeast. In the case of port, grape brandy is added to kill off the yeast early, leaving a residual sugar in the wine before it turns into a traditional wine.

Our first stop on the trip was to Quinta do Bom Retiro right in the centre of the valley or the Cima Corgo region of the Douro.

View Map

It is a beautiful property, which has been in the family since 1919, although it is one of the original Quintas from the 18^th century. Tradition is still very much in evidence with the grapes still trodden by foot instead of machine pressed. This is not just for the sake of it, they believe that the softer breaking of the skins adds to the flavour. They are, in fact, very forward in their thinking being one of the first houses to separate the grapes into different varietals (Tinta Barroca, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz and Touriga Nacional). Traditionally, grapes were grown together in a mixture, with no distinction between grape varieties, and are still widely grown that way today. Until the work done by Ramos Pinto, not much was known about the characteristics of the styles of grape. Although at this site they still have the mixture original plantings they have also put aside the plots of land for single varietals giving them lots of control and options over their product.

The Quinta also boasts one of the first swimming pools ever to built in the area. The setting was amazing, enjoying white port with tonic overlooking the incredible landscape was something I will never forget. (I must drink more White Port and Tonic).

The pool and view from Bom Retiro

Adjoning Quinta do Bom Retiro is Urtiga, the Quinta that used to produce the house port Gales stocked. Now their grapes are blended with the grapes of Bom Retiro to make the wine for the Collector Port that is our new house port.

Bom Retiro produces all the ruby and vintage port that is made by Ramos before it is aged at the port lodge in Porto in its impressive facility. The tour was educational, seeing for the first time ever the way that their wine is produced, from start to finish, gave me much more of a link with drink.

The grapes at Bom Retiro are also solely responsible for the 20 year old tawny which has won best fortified wine award by Decanter magazine. A prestigious award considering the category is not limited to just port.

We also stock Ramos Pinto’s still wine (their definition of regular non fortified wine). Duas Quintas is a new string to the company’s bow, the name of the wine refers to the two new vineyards in the Douro Superior area of the valley. Both are very modern in their approach to making wine.

Elvamoria

View Map

The first view of Elvamoria

Elvamoria was one of the best experiences I’ve had. The place was truly in the middle of nowhere, a long trip by car through nothing but dirt for most of the last section. The view in the picture above is the first you see from the road and the first green in an age. The vineyard was hand picked by José António Ramos Pinto Rosas from military maps. The perfect plot of land to grow grapes for mechanisation. Port is famous for its steep valleys with tiered slopes. Elvamoria is relatively shallow and close to the river giving Jose the blank slate to grow grapes from scratch, not using the mixture vines, but planting a patch of varietal in the perfect area. As you can see from the photograph above, the vines are arranged up the hill as opposed to going along the contours. The book was really rewritten by the project but it could all have been different. The valley was threatened by the planned building of a government dam. The whole plot would have been under water but for the finding of rock etchings in caves on the land. The vineyard has a museum on the site to this day to look after the area’s ancient treasures.

Along with the Duas Quintas, this plot is solely responsible for the 10 year old tawny we stock.

Quinta Bons Ares

View Map

It is the vinification centre for the two vineyards, bought for its proximity to Elvamoria and its altitude which makes it perfect for storing. the wine here. As at Bom Retiro, it is fermented and barrelled and in some cases bottled on site. The facilities are spotless and very systematic.

Seeing this all first hand is great, but with port it is only half the story. The ageing process determines the outcome of the port greatly, this almost solely happens at the port lodge in Porto.

The port lodges are built into the side of a hill and are north facing, allowing the minimum temperature fluctuation so that the wine can age consistently, Ramos is like a labyrinth, I assume other port houses must be the same with endless rows of ageing barrels and bottles.

Port wine falls into several categories

Ruby : Is your regular port which makes up the vast majority of production, blended from several years port and aged in concrete casks before being bottled.

Vintage : Only the best years harvest gets made with the grapes from that year. Only aged for two years in the barrel, they do the vast majority of ageing in the bottle and take a good 10 years to get even close to being ready. Considered the best of the area’s wine they are rare and can be expensive.

L B V (or late bottled vintage):This is the same grape from the declared vintage year but left in the barrel a little longer. This means that you get the best grapes ready to drink straight away. The wine rarely gets much better in the bottle as all the sediment has been removed..

Tawny: Aged in the barrel allowing the port to take on the character of the wood and be oxidised by the semi permeable nature of the barrel. Lighter in colour, they lose a lot of the fruit character and take on a nutty vanilla character. The age on the label is an average age. In Ramos Pinto’s case they put a very little amount of their oldest ports in all their tawny ports.

Then we went to the tasting laboratory.

The Blending Laboratory

This is where the blending happens, with cask samples from all over the lodge it seems like a laboratory, light and airy, a complete contrast to the dark caves we had been in. It is a fascinating process. It is here that we tasted the entire range of wines they made. As a special treat, we also had the smallest taste of the first port every produced by the company - a real honour .The age of this wine - over 100 years old - really showed in the tasting, with the wine separating into two distinct tastes, one taste of spirit and one of subtle fruit and vanilla, instead of the balanced nature of younger ports.

We went to the museum and company offices, which are on Ramos Pinto Road, which overlooks the Eiffel Bridge.

Me by the Eiffel Bridge

This is where we found out about the family, one of the few Portuguese family port houses, the great man José António Ramos Pinto Rosas and his tremendous impact on the direction of the company.

The trip was truly educational and has left me with an expensive port habit which I feel the need to satisfy regularly.

Ramos Pinto Dry White Port

Dry white is not the best name for this as it is not dry, only when compared to other white ports in Ramos’ range does this appear dry. Served cold this wine is the prefect summer aperitif and gets any dinner party off to the right start. I prefer to have it with an antipasto starter.

In Portugal on my trip I was introduced to the way the young Portuguese drink it. White port, tonic and a squeeze of lemon is a very refreshing drink and perfect for all of you looking for a new summer drink.

Ramos Pinto Late Bottled Vintage

Late bottled vintage, or LBV as it’s usually called, is a ruby port which only contains grapes from the best years aged in oak for 4 or 5 years, then bottled. This LBV is unfiltered for the biggest fruit flavour available for this wine. Although it is ready to drink straight away it will keep in the bottle for a good while and, although not strictly necessary, I find decanting to get a little air into the wine really helps.

As with all ruby ports this wine finds its home with big fatty cheeses but can also be matched with bitter dark chocolate desserts.