On Saturday January 23rd, I attended a red wine tasting of 14 wines from various regions, all commonly available in Quebec liquor stores, priced between $18 and $30 CDN. We were 14 people attending a birthday party celebration, and everyone brought with them an assigned bottle. The idea was that everyone would have a chance to taste and evaluate 14 different wines, and hopefully find 3 or 4 new wines they would enjoy enough to want to buy again. We tasted in order three Cote Du Rhone wines, followed by one wine from Cahors, three wines from Bordeaux, two from California, two Spanish wines, one Australian, one from Argentina, and one Port. All the wines were quite good, but two did not show well, one because it was too young (the Vacqueyras), and the other because it was poorly positioned in the tasting after a much fruitier wine (the...
Read moreReg’s Wine Blog – Post # 6 February 19, 2016 – Hugel’s 1976 Gewurztraminer “Hugel” Vendange Tardive Sélection de Grains Nobles Fut 28, Ringing in the new year with a fabulous 40 year old Hugel wine
I had the good fortune to visit with Jean Hugel at his winery in Riquewihr with my family in September 1986. We tasted many of Hugel’s wines including his famous late harvest dessert wines, and this wine in particular. In 1986 it was superb, rich, unctuous, sweet and incredibly well balanced, and by Jean Hugel’s own words this wine would last at least 50 years and 1976 was probably the best vintage for his SGN wines in the last 100 years. I will be writing another blog in future about that visit with Jean Hugel in 1986, so for now let’s focus on the wine tasting. Since 1986 I have tasted the 1976 Gewurztraminer “Hugel” Vendange Tardive SGN twice, once in 1995, and again in 2005 to keep track of the wine’s aging process in order to be sure I do not keep my remaining bottles too long. The...
Read moreReg’s Wine Blog – Post # 5 February 9, 2016 – Decorating the tree with a 1976 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Beerenauslese
Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions are all great times to open that special bottle of wine you have been saving. This blog is going to assume that you have been saving and properly storing your special wine for quite a while and that it is still good to drink. We are also assuming that your wine is a good wine and worth saving. I had the whole family over for dinner about two weeks before Christmas (December 13th) and after dinner the 11 of us decorated the family Christmas tree. I had an old German dessert wine that I wanted to open. I wanted a family occasion and our family normally makes a big deal out of decorating the tree, and it always launches the Christmas season and Christmas spirit. My 1976 Wehlener Sonnenuhr was now 39 years of age, and my concern was that the wine could...
Read moreReg’s Wine Blog – Post # 4 February 3, 2016 – Bad Restaurant Behavior – Refusing the Wine
Several years ago my wife and I had the misfortune to go out to dinner with 3 other couples to a fine Montreal restaurant. Even though each couple were paying for their own dinner, we intended to split the wine bill evenly amongst the 4 couples. One of our friends took it upon himself to order the first wine for everyone without consulting any of us and he promptly proceeded to order up an expensive Spanish red Priorata type wine. This by itself was a very poor choice and we should have stopped the process before he ordered that wine, but most of us were distracted in conversation and failed to notice he was ordering anything. Having ordered the wine our friend got to taste it first. He tasted it and promptly refused the wine, telling the waiter the wine was defective and to fetch another bottle. The poor...
Read moreReg’s Wine Blog – Post # 3 January 27, 2016 – The Wine Tasting Party
If you have never hosted a wine tasting party, consider doing so, you will have lots of fun, and you will usually find at least a couple of good new wines to add to your list of favorites. The ideal size is 8 to 10 people, or 4 to 5 couples. Each person brings a bottle of wine from a preselected list put together by the host or hostess. Any more or less people means there is either too much or too little wine per person per bottle. Everyone wants a good taste from each bottle, usually 2.5 – 3 ounces per person, which is exactly what 8-10 people get from a 750 ml (26 ounce) bottle. As the host of the evening you will need a good corkscrew, wine glasses, baguettes or crackers with mild cheese or other finger food, pens and writing paper for everyone, a jug...
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