All that sparkles isn't champagne...

I have declared in the past my affection for a nice glass of champagne, my preference being a lovely glass of grower blanc de blanc (like Jacques Selosse Initiale). I have to admit that sometimes I have to baulk at the prices of these wines though. The best deal you are likely to get on a decent bottle of champagne in Ireland is still going to cost more than €25 (in most cases more than €50). This unfortunately pushes champagne out of the everyday drinking category and this is a real pity because it would be a great thing to be able to drink champagne everyday!

I was intrigued last week when I saw that Terroirs (http://www.terroirs.ie/) in Donnybrook were having their annual wine sale and even more intrigued when I saw a sparkling Loire wine on sale for €14, especially given a recent write up it had received from Tomas Clancy (It’s a superb, light, pitch-perfect wine with white-skinned peach flavours over a fine rush of bubbles. Grab a case and bring on the sunshine and strawberries.” Tomàs Clancy, Sunday Business Post, April ’08.). As a result I rushed in last week and picked up a bottle to test it out. Jean-François Mérieau Touraine "Bulles" This sparkling wine is made of 80% Chenin Blanc and 20% Chardonnay. Very faint yellow in glass with nice effervescence. Faint again on the nose with a slight hint of lemons. On the palate, this wine was bone dry with flavours of apples, melons, and lemons being prominent and there are definite hints of minerals and chalk (very reminiscent of Cotes De Blanc). This isn't a wine that is ever going to blow anyone away but it is very proper and inoffensive and a damn sight better than NV Moet or any Prosecco (Excluding Bisol) / Cava! The normal retail for this is €23 which isn't a complete rip-off but at €14 on sale this is a screaming bargain and one to stock up on for the Summer months. I don't think there is any value in ageing this, it's one to buy and drink pretty much straight away. It would be equally good with food or without.

I was also tempted by Macôn Solutré “Clos des Bertillonnes” 2005 Domaine Robert Denogent but unfortunately this wasn't as successful, so have a good look through the sale offers (on the website) and choose carefully (if possible try before you buy!). At €18.50 I was expecting something very nice but this was very much a case of Mutton dressed as lamb. It hinted at seriousness with some nice oak and some good fruit but it didn't have the class to follow through. It had a strange lime componant that threw the whole wine off and it was difficult to drink more than 1 glass. On a side note, it's interesting to see that Chris Kissack is also recommending a sparkling Loire wine this week, even though I've never seen this particular wine for sale in Ireland. http://www.thewinedoctor.com/weekend/huetpetillant02.shtml

Best Steak Ever!

If you've been following this blog at all you'll realise that I have a certain penchant for a nice piece of meat. As with any faithful carnivore (of the Irish kind anyway), my preference is for a decent side of beef. I have, for the past year or so, been experimenting with different cuts and different cooking methods for beef and I think I have finally found the perfect steak. At the last minute I realised I had a mid week evening totally free (the first one in a while...) and I was also finished work at a reasonable hour so I rang my flatmate and enquired whether he would be interesting in an evening of food/wine.

I took the opportunity to have a wander about Fallon & Byrne in search of culinary inspiration and I spotted a double rib of beef on the bone that delivered said inspiration in spades! I have cooked a rib of beef on the bone in the past but I set myself a challenge this evening to perfect the dish. I decided to ignore all potential sauces that could be made from all of the beautiful rendered fats and juices from the rib and just to focus on the flavour of the meat itself. Firstly I marinated the beef with rosemary, garlic and lemon juice and then seared the beef before throwing it in the oven for 20 minutes or so. I served it with some boiled new potatoes and purple broccoli and roasted butternut squash.

The result of this dish delivered a serious Flintstones moment as we had the pleasure of eating some seriously delicious tender meat directly from the bone. Needless to say this may have actually been the tastiest steak I have ever eaten, even though again the volume may have been a little excessive...

The evening was not all about food though, there was also some nice wines to be consumed. I decided it was time again to revisit one of my favourite topics, 2005 Bourgogne Rouge. I took the opportunity to taste 2 of my favourites side by side to get a real time comparison. We drank firstly a bottle of 2005 Jean Grivot Bourgogne Rouge and then moved onto a bottle of the 2005 Dom. De La Croix Bourgogne Rouge. The comparison was very revealing. Both wines were excellent, and great QPRs but this evening the Croix wine stood out heads and shoulders above the Grivot wine. Both wines had good noses and great breath and length of flavour on the palate but the Croix wine was smoother and longer, and had more definitive flavours, with coffee and strawberries and cream on top of the cherries and raspberries that the Grivot also had. The Grivot was much drier and more tannic than the Croix but at the same time begged for another sip just after the glass was laid down. The Domaine De La Croix is currently showing better than ever, I am actually thinking of ordering some more bottles, where as the Grivot showed better a few months ago and I feel it may be going into slumber and worth leaving for at least another 3/4 years before opening another bottle.

All together an excellent evening!

Online Inspiration 5: Food!!! (Eat My Globe, The Great Big Veg Challange)

I haven't been drinking much wine of late (may try to remedy that this evening) so I thought I might try to resurrect these Online Inspiration blogs. I like food almost as much as I like wine and sometimes I break away from reading just wine blogs and read a few food blogs too. Of course there are many more food blogs out on the web than wine blogs so I've been careful to subscribe to blogs that have a particularly interesting & entertaining content rather than just lists of recipes etc.

1 food blog that typifies this idea of interesting and entertaining content is that of Simon Majumdar (http://eatmyglobe.blogspot.com/)
This blog follows Simon around the world as he gets his teeth into whatever type of foods he can find. I discovered his blog initially through a post on Jamie Goodes webpage and have been hooked ever since. His posts are sporadic but whenever one pops up in my google reader I get very excited. So far I have followed him across China, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Russia, the US, Mexico, Iceland, Finland and the UK. This is an excellent blog that is written in a very informal style and it's great to travel around the world vicariously on Simons coat tails. Along with some very amusing tales he takes some excellent photos that really give an excellent sense of where he is going through. I think he is planning on publishing a book at the end of the whole trip but I'm not sure and I don't think it really matters anyway as the read along the way is so entertaining anyway.

Another great food blog that I look forward to seeing pop up in my google reader is The Great Big Veg Challange (http://www.greatbigvegchallenge.blogspot.com/). This blog is the polar opposite from Eat My Globe. This blog documents Charlotte Humes struggle to get her son Freddie to eat his vegetables. As a result she has decided to go through the Vegetable Alphabet getting her son to taste dishes made from each and every Vegetable that she can find. They started off with Asparagus and have made it through to tomatoes so far. This blog again is a very entertaining read and also very informative as she discovers what all of those strange looking veg in the supermarket are (Daikon anyone?). There is a great community build up around this blog and Charlotte regularly pulls recipes from the community when she is stuck for inspiration. This is a great blog for those who have kids (or in my case friends) who are fussy about their veggies.

There are some other excellent foodie blogs that you can find on the bloglist on the right hand toolbar on this page, check them out!

Gourmet Burgers

There are a huge number of new 'gourmet' burger joints popping up around Dublin on a very frequent basis at the moment. In the same way that juice bars opened on every corner a few years ago, now fancy fast food restaurants are opening all over the south side of the city. In Ballsbridge and Ranelagh you have the Gourmet Burger Company, in Rathmines there is Jo-Burger and on Camden St you have BóBó and I'm sure there are more. All of these places offer a different take on the theme but all of their products are similar and delicious. My current favourite of these is Jo-Burger, it's a South Afircan themed restaurant with a serious sense of cool about it, but I reserve the right to change my mind as I go. Most of these will also offer you a wine or beer to go with your food so they can make for a good alternative to more traditional restaurants if you are looking for a very informal night out

In reality a 'gourmet' burger is a very easy thing to make at home. My personal favourite is lamb with lots of fresh coriander.

I made a couple excessively large burgers during the week. To make the burger I got some lovely mince beef, chopped a shallot, added in some fresh coriander and a head of roast garlic. After I was finished frying the burgers I used the residue in the pan, a glass of white wine, a nice splash of cream and a whole bunch of pepper corns to make a pepper sauce to serve on the burger. The result was a bit oversized but very tasty, especially with some homemade chips. The evening was a small celebration so we drank a bottle of Vilmart Grand Cellier D'Or 2000 with it and despite being non traditional the combination was pretty good. The champagne started out slow but opened up a hell of a lot as it warmed over time. This wine isn't in the same class as the Coeur De Cuvee or the Cuvee Creation but is excellent in it's own price bracket.

Lamb a dam a ding dong

One of the real pleasures about living in Ireland at this time of year is the availability of amazing spring lamb. Spring lamb is at present entering its peak eating window (and should be here for the next month). To celebrate and take advantage of this fact I decided recently to try my hand at cooking a beautiful leg of spring lamb. The poor lamb in question was sourced from Fallon & Byrne and was said to come from Sligo/Mayo (the butcher declared that this is where the best lambs come from, personally I would vote for Kerry). The joint was a hefty 5lbs and looked terrific, so I was very much looking forward to cooking it.

One of the great joys about cooking a leg of lamb is its versatility, there are a multitude of different ways to cook it. I decided to go for a pretty traditional approach: I scored the lamb all over and inserted shards of garlic, rosemary and anchovies into the cuts. I then ground up some more garlic, rosemary, pepper, anchovies with olive oil and rubbed it all over the lamb. I then seared the lamb all over and placed it on a bed of onions, carrots, garlic, rosemary & mint. I deglazed the searing pan with some red wine and poured this over the lamb and then squeezed a lemon over and threw that into the roasting dish also (these juices assisted in making sure that the drippings didn't burn too much into the pan too much). I then par-boiled some golden wonders and threw them in with the lamb after an hour. 30 minutes later I took the lamb out and rolled the potatos around in the fat and left them in for another 5 minutes.

At this stage the lamb and potatos were done, but no roast lamb would be complete without a lovely gravy to go with it. To make this I deglazed the roasting dish with some red wine and then squished all of the veggies into the pan and then sieved the liquid in the pan into a saucepan. I reduced this down and added some balsamic vinegar and at the last minute a dollop of butter. With a little bit of seasoning this became a ridiculously delicious gravy. As an afterthought I boiled up some garden peas and threw in some butter and fresh mint once the water had drained out.

To accompany this we drank a fine bottle of Bordeaux (Lambs best friend), 2003 Lynch Bages. I opened this bottle 6 hours in advance and it really needed it. On opening the wine wasn't great, it was quite astringent and a bit thin. Over time it picked up weight and smoothed out. I don't think this will ever be a great wine, but it was very nice with the lamb. It had all the components of a great wine (nice oak, tannin, acid) but they just didn't meld together very well. It was much nicer with food than on its own. for dessert I picked up a tasty little cheese cake from Rolys Bistro in ballsbridge. This one was white chocolate mousse with brownie and it was super.

All in all a super meal!

The Wineport Lodge

I had the extreme pleasure of spending the weekend at the wineport lodge in glassan, near Athlone. I had read about this hotel in the past (on the blue book) and have wanted to go for a while but getting a booking can be quite difficult. I was browsing the website (http://www.wineport.ie/) a few months ago and noticed an opening for the middle of April so I booked it there and then. Glassan is only a short drive from Dublin (2.5 hrs on a Friday afternoon, 1.25 hrs on a Sunday afternoon) and we had a very pleasant spin down last Friday. The hotel itself is somewhat inspired by the Hotel Du Vin hotels in the Uk and each room has a wine theme. We got upgraded to a suite (not sure why), which was a nice surprise, and the theme of our room was Margaux. As far as I could see there was no huge margaux influence on our room but it was a very nice room none the less. Our room was right on the lake (I think all of them are) and it was very quiet and relaxing, we had a beautiful view and when we left the door open we could hear the water lapping outside. We celebrated our arrival with a delicious bottle of Vilmart Coeur De Cuvee 1998. This is a fantastic champagne. It has serious burgundian undertones with great length fruit and structure. I left half a bottle open in the fridge overnight and it was just a nice the following day.

We drove into Galway for an adventure on Saturday afternoon which was very nice. They have a super market there, it's quite small but all of the stands have excellent products. We enjoyed some delicious south african sausages, pea and potato curry, fresh doughnuts and chocolate & almonds rolls (we had to be rolled back to Glassan). Galway is a lovely town to wander about, given the fact that the vast majority of the town is pedestrianised.

We ate at the wineport on the Saturday evening. The meal itself was of a very high standard (not quite Michelan Star). We were given a little amouse of pork mousse, which wasn't very enticing. I had asparagus with duck eggs for a starter and Aoife ate a fantastic salmon ballotine. My starter was quite nice but Aoifes was truely brilliant. For the mains I had pork belly and Aoife had steak. My main was very nice and hers was a little underdone.. For desserts I had a fruit crumble which was good again but Aoife had a lemon Creme brulee which was mind blowing. It had the perfect balance of sweet and bitter and was delightfully light. Overall we were quite impressed with the food, especially the outstanding starter and dessert. The wine on the other hand was a little disappointing. I decided to order half bottles (1 red, 1 white) and the selection was quite small but I thought there were still some good options. Initially we drank a bottle of the 2006 Vacheron sancerre. It was very hard work, tons of fruit but it was gooseberries,green peppers and grass galore... There was loads of minerals and acid on the palate. I used to be a big fan of this style of wine and this particular wine (from previous vintages) but I found this wine a bit difficult and not very enjoyable. We also had a bottle of 2005 Delas Crozes Hermitage, which was terrible... Confected fruit, acid out of balance, we barely drank a glass each of the wine. Makes one wonder again about lower level Rhones (even from 2005).

All in all a very enjoyable weekend. It was hassle free and very relaxing, I'd certainly recommend it if you can get a booking.

Chateau Neuf & Pasta

This definitely wasn't one of those classical parings that will go down in the ages but in some strange way it worked quite well. Fallon & Byrne are stocking some outrageously good fresh pasta at the moment. They have 4/5 different varieties so last night I decided to try their Butternut Squash & Sage Tortelli and the Asparagus & Pecorino Tortelli. They also have some delicious frozen breads, last night I cooked (threw in the oven for 5 minutes) a bread with sheeps cheese, garlic & basil. The pasta just needs to be boiled for 4 minutes then drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with some freshly cracked black pepper and Malden sea salt. Overall the food was quite cheesy (both the pasta and bread contained some pretty strong flavours) so I thought I might try to hack into one final hearty red before the Summer comes rolling in (Hopefully).

I picked up the 2004 Chateau De Vieux Telegraph 'Le Crau' in half bottle

(did I mention I love half bottles) on my last trip over to London.
This wine was bright purple showing extreme youth (as to be expected) and on the nose it was initially quite muted. With a little bit of warming and time the nose exploded with gobs of fruit, red initially raspberries and cherries and black later with plums and liquorice, there was also plenty of spice in here. On the palate it was a similar story, red then black fruits with lots of spice. There was also a little heat on the palate, not a severe as some Aussie Alco-Monsters, but the wine filled the whole palate and had great length. Overall a very nice mid-week wine (especially in the half bottle) but I suspect that this wine would have been a lot nice in a few years time.

Lack of Updates

As I'm sure (hope) you have noticed, there has been a distinct lack of blogposts recently on the blog. This isn't for any particular reason, it's mainly as a result of a lack of wine related activities on my part and also due to a certain amount of laziness. I haven't actually been drinking much wine of late and certainly nothing noteworthy. I did have a bottle of Loan Range Pinot Noir 2005 from M&S last night and while a decent little drop it was nothing spectacular. I also did an interesting comparison of tasting a decent producers basic Bourgogne Aligote with his Puligny Montrachet which supported the natural hierarchy well. I also think I have cracked the process of cooking a decent risotto (if I do say so myself). Wild mushroom has been the flavour of the month but I'm tempted to try a butternut squash & roasted garlic version that I read on Hannahs Country Kitchen.

There's plenty of interesting things going on with regard to wine online.There has been a seismic shift on http://www.wine-pages.co.uk/ forums recently as quite a number of exiles from erobertparker.com have now made it their home. This has resulted in a huge jump in the overall activity on the forum but it has also shifted the dynamic of the forum also, it'll be very interesting to see how the whole change pans out.http://www.wineboard.ie/ have released their Spring newsletter and 1 interesting thing to note is a new set of fine wine tastings, hopefully I'll manage to go along to at least 1 of these sessions. I've gotten a little bored of Gary Vaynerchuck lately, I think maybe this website only has a limited shelflife but I still do tune in when he is tasting something that's of interest to me.Mike Steinberger has written a very interesting piece about the future of wine writing that is definitely worth a read: http://www.alicefeiring.com/winebitch/SteinbergerWineWriting.pdf

I have an interesting weekend planned this weekend so hopefully I'll have some more inspirational posts next week. I'm also hoping that Paul will post a couple more blogs regarding his recent trip to South Africa. Lar over at http://www.sourgrapes.ie/ is holding his first of new monthly tasting evenings in Fallon & Byrne next week, unfortunately I won't make this one but I look forward to reading about how it all goes.

Decanter on fire

Possibly one of the funniest April fools pieces today in the decanter magazine.

http://www.decanter.com/news/201337.html

Javier Bardem to play Robert Parker

More 2005 Bourgogne Rouge (Gerbet)

Gerbet Hautes Cotes De Nuits Village 2005. Nice wine with lots going on, red & black fruits/earth/animal, not the finest or most refined of wines but showing alot of character. Good value.
I'm coming to the realisation that these low level 2005s are all very nice bottles of wine, that are nice to have lying around in single or double bottle quantities. I wouldn't like to drink the same one again and again but each bottle does show enough interest to offer good drinking for either mid-week, fine dining or even late at night. For example some wines drunk over the last number of weeks, Grivot/Gerbet/Croix, all offer more pleasure than some mid-tier burgundies from lesser years (04 Dujac Chambolle springs to mind) and are also nicer/more interesting than most new world Pinots. All are around the 15-25 euro mark, which while isn't extremely cheap it certainly isn't expensive... I think the key is to shop around and to be selective about which ones to try. I wasn't impressed by the Barthod 05 and I've heard poor reviews for the Jadot 05 also but I won't let that stop me trying some more of these delicious beauties.