Revisiting old friends

We had plenty of smiles in the office at this week’s tasting, where we dug out a few old friends and put them up against some new contenders for the 100 bin list.

It’s amazing how these wines change and evolve over time, and also slightly infuriating that we have to hold on to them, love them, cellar them and nurture them for six months plus to really get the most out of them. Thank goodness we haven’t got a finance director is all we say!

We kicked off by reviewing the Sierra de Siles 2010 Red from Spain which, quite honestly, is just the most amazingly juicy, fresh and deliciously chunky red that any of us could hope to be drinking at any drinks party or casual dinner/lunch/breakfast we might find ourselves at. It’s no secret that its been selected as Rick Stein’s Spanish Red with his own label and quite rightly so – it’s a belter.

Moving on we tackled the Vacqueyras 2008 by our friends from Domaine du Pesquier.  2008 was a relatively unexciting, bordering on poor, vintage for the Rhone, but we gave this wine a massive thumbs up. It’s fresher than many of the 07s and 09s we’ve tried from France’s deep south and we love its smack of white pepper and plum on the nose and the clean, rich but pure fruit on the palate. It’s a wonderful, autumnal, dinner party red that’s developed beautifully since we tasted it last.

We’d recently visited the Annual Trade Tasting for the wines of Argentina and had identified a handful of Malbecs that we’d thought to be very good. On bringing them back to play with our lot back in our tasting room we stood them up to our Pascal Toso Malbec 2010 which, quite frankly, blew them clean out the water. This has been such a popular wine all year for us and just recently, with the onset of a few cold days, is proving THE wine of the moment. If you’re looking for rich, fleshy, juicy blackcurrant to warm the cockles as you’re debating whether or not to switch on the central heating then we’d urge you to poor yourself a glass of this while you think about it. It is the best Malbec you can buy for the money and we’d like you to if you find out otherwise.

 

We’ll update the tasting notes on these wines for those who are as geeky as us, but the message I guess is that we’re loving rediscovering our wines and putting them to the test. We’ll be doing more of this every Friday making sure what leaves our cellars and lands on your tables excites you as much as it does us. Simple really!