When I was a young man and wanted to visit London I would drive up to Hyde Park and find a convenient parking spot not far from the Serpentine where I could leave the car all day for nothing, not far from a tube station.
No, you can’t do that any more. But what you can do is drive up to the Bois de Boulogne and park near Le Pavillon Dauphin (photo above) close to the métro station Place Dauphine. It’s not as good as my wife’s maternal grandfather who told us about parking for free in the rue de Rivoli but it’s not bad and perfectly free. So that’s what I did on Tuesday. Actually rather than take the métro I walked up avenue Bugeaud to Place Victor Hugo,where I had my first meeting.
Later I went over to rue de la Boetie where someone kindly invited me to lunch, and was generous enough to let me choose the wine, Savennières 2003. It was gorgeous, lovely yellow colour, dry and mature. That and the delightful meal convinced me that I should enjoy life to the full. I walked up the Champs Elysées and back down Avenue Foch (below) Ah the simple pleasures in life is what I like.
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Savannières -- I'm not familiar with that one (not, as I've said, that I drink a lot of white). Where's it from. I still have my half dozen of bottles of St Nic down in the cellar, as you advised. I'm figuring on waiting another couple of weeks and then opening one of them to see how they're coming along. Our local cheese shop has been getting in some lovely unpasteurized Quebec cheeses lately. With bread fresh from the bakery next door and the right wine....
Bill, Savennières (I hope I have the spelling correct now) is another little bijou from the Loire valley. It is in the Anjou, but has strictly nothing to do with that horrid rosé, 99% of which we export to the UK.
It is Chenin Blanc cépage. The vineyard is really quite small so it is a confidential wine. It is unusual for the Loire because it has a lovely golden colour rather like a sauternes but is completely dry. It has a slight bitter taste to begin with which discourages some people but your taste buds quickly adapt; then it becomes a mature silky flavour.It is also one of the few Loire valley keepers, most of the wine we drink is young.
The two French bankers who were with me and have downed a bottle or two over time, didn't know it either. The patron of the restaurant said it was strictly for select conoisseurs!!!! Cost €54
I doubt if I'll find it here or in the States (I'm looking at a trip to L.A. next month) but I'll certainly make a note of it for the next time I'm in France. Meanwhile, I'm just in from the little bistro my wife and I go to every Friday evening to unwind from the working week (she's in management so, basically, I listen while she unloads; it's a partnership). The owner is a wine enthusiast and picks and chooses here and there, often in very small batches, so his list is changing constantly. I usually just ask him what we should be drinking with whatever we're eating and let him choose. Tonight it was something new to me -- le Pigoulet en Provence (from the southern Rhone), 2002. Medium-bodied and with peppery overtones; a wine I wouldn't mind trying again.
Her's what I found on the internet. Sounds nice.
003 Le Pigeoulet En Provence Vin de Pays de Vaucluse
[Provence]
[Rhone-style blend]
]
Chateau/Producer: Le Pigeoulet En Provence
Wine Name: Vin de Pays de Vaucluse
Country: France
State: Provence
AOC: Vin de pays
Region: Northern provence
Wine Score: 91
Notes: Although this is technically a Provencial vin de pays, it is from the area where the Rhone region meets Provence, and it has all the characteristics of a very nice Rhone blend. Its colour is a very dark, beety red. The nose is great, with a medium strength, but fruity and rich. The flavour is like a very pleasant Cotes du Rhone, with nice fruits, raspberries and plums, some noticeable tannins, a bit of an acidic bite but not too much. This has a great value/price ratio. It went very, very well with the lamb at dinner.
Tasting Date: 2006-02-11
Varietal: Grenache, Cabernet sauvignon, Syrah
Production Notes: This wine is made by the Brunier family, whose flagship wine is the excellent Vieux-Telegraphe Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The name "Le Pigoulet" is Provencal for "little one."
Price US$: 9.99
Source: Village Wine Market, Birmingham
Very nice wine, le vieux telegraph - drank some at Christmas.
This is what Colinb is drinking tonight
Château Rauzan-Ségla 1996
Margaux
Un vin riche, fruité et puissant qui mérite encore quelques années de garde pour atteindre son apogée. Parfaite structure tannique et matière pure et dense.
1855 Notation:
Parker Notation: 88 / 100
Should be good although reading between the lines the tannins may be a bit too strong. 1996 is a good year. The chateau was bought by Chanel in 1993, they spent a lot of money and it has become a very good wine. 1996 was a bit too early for the benefit of the improvements to show through. I suspect Colinb is paying a little over the odds and the ladies may find it a bit heavy going.
Hmmm. I wish I could afford the 'simple' pleasures of life, Richard. 54€ for a lunchtime bottle of wine???
Sigh. How the other half live...
Gigi I don't get invited out to a Paris restaurant and bought a delightful bottle of wine everyday. But it does happen, and as I have always said, France treats me very well. Mind you I suspect you can pick up a delightful Savennières for €6 if you keep your eyes open. But then I invested a lot of effort and time into the country so I think it's at least partially deserved.
It's nice to see the Johnny come lately in Antibes making a mess of his wine buying. But if you go about things the way he does, the bad results will follow.
To be perfectly honest I would love to know more about wine. One of my students (her father was an oenologist)told me the best way to start was to buy two bottles - a Burgundy and a Bordeaux, for example, and taste them one after the other. I think I do know the difference anyway, but I took her advice and ended up completely sloshed. At that point, I wouldn't have known the difference between a glass of Burgundy and a bucket of hydrochloric acid.
I also read an interesting article somewhere that claimed (experiments had been done) that descriptions such as 'raspberry', 'cherry' etc for red wine and 'vanilla', peach' etc for white are merely related to the colour of the wine. When white wine was coloured red, it was described as having red-fruit flavours. I'll have to do my own experiments on that one...I'll let you know :-)
You know what they say, Gigi -- good wine is seldom expensive; bad wine is never cheap. It's one of the most enjoyable subjects in the world to study. I was lucky enough to do a one-day mini-course a few years ago at a wine "university" in the Rhone. The instructor got quite ticked off at us because as we got into the better stuff, few of us were spitting it out. He said one thing I've always remembered: "You can spend $1,000 or more on a bottle of one of the great vintages of a classic wine. And if you don't like it, you've wasted your money."
Tonight with dinner (roast pork), we're having a wine I haven't tried before: a 2001 Minervoir la Liviniere; Clos Centeille. If it's good, I shall go back tomorrow and buy more.
I have a '96 Margaux downstairs. I think it needs a couple more years yet.
To my mind, the best book ever written on wine is Encyclopedia des Vins by Alexis Lichine. If you want to get to know wine, this is the book. I see that it has recently been updated from the original 1980 edition, but not by Lichine, as he died in 1989.
The Hugh Johnson book wasn't bad - quite good for beginners and his tips on wines were good. I'm not a fan of Parker - too American.
For me, Lichine is the 'Bible' of wine. Obviously nothing replaces drinking a good glass/bottle of wine, but it is always interesting to find out more about it. Sometimes a 'good' wine seems disappointing - one can say pretty safely that due to improved vinification processes over the last fifteen/twenty years 'bad' years are becoming a thing of the past - often disappointment is due to mismatching of the food and the wine, which is a pretty subtle art. I still believe that if you don't have the ability to cook or at least knowledge of good food, you cannot choose a wine to go with a meal.
An example - there is no point in opening a bottle of St. Emilion to go with a boeuf bourgignon if you have marinated the meat in cheap plonk. The meat must be marinated in the wine you are going to serve with it. Okay, so we can't afford to use a bottle of Cheval Blanc in the cooking - so why not use a good meaty Torres for the marinade and the meal.
I agree with you about Johnson over Parker. Is the Lichine book available in an English translation, I'm wondering. You're right, too, about not cooking with inferior wines. Painful as it sometimes is to see something decent going into a stewpot.
Yes, the book does exist in English - Encyclopedia of Wines and Spirits.
I shall seek it out!
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