jamie goode's wine blog

Thursday, October 16, 2008

A busy day of tasting, but a very good one. Those of you who don't taste professionally will probably think I'm a total wimp when I blog that 'I'm tired' after a day of tasting wine. I understand: it doesn't sound like a tough way of earning a living, but it *really* is physically quite demanding and requires a lot of concentration when you spend a full day doing it.

I began at 10 am at the WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) headquarters in Bermondsey, near London Bridge station, for a Wine & Spirit magazine tasting. Natasha Hughes, David Williams, Claire Hu, Simon Woods and I were tasting 20 wines from Les Caves de Pyrene, unblind. As you'd expect it was an eclectic, slightly funky, but fascinating selection. It's so good to taste wines like these, which are full of interest, because it reminds you what it was that attracted you to wine in the first place.

Then it was off to the Waitrose press tasting, part two. Today I did whites and some more sweet wines. Some real highlights, including a lovely flight of Germans – with the standout being a wonderfully, breathtakingly pure and aromatic Riesling from Donnhoff (Kreuznacher Krotenpfuhl Riesling Spatlese 2006)– a lovely Austrian Riesling (Rabl Schenkenbichl 2007), a profound pair of Spanish whites (Fefinanes Albarino 2007 and Mas d'en Compte 2006) and a mindblowingly good sweet Sherry (Matusalem). The tasting confimed that Waitrose is the wine-lover's supermarket.

I finished the day by heading over to the Atlas in Fulham for a rather special sherry tasting. It was focusing on 20 and 30 year old wines, and they were wonderful. The final straight in the tasting was a flight of seven Pedro Ximenez wines. If you haven't tried an old PX you probably won't appreciate what a daunting task this flight represents, but I survived! It's a cliche, but Sherry is underrated and undervalued. We should drink more of it.

So now, as I head home on the District Line, I'm really knackered. Fortunately my teeth don't hurt, but my mouth feels a bit weary, and the last thing I feel like doing is pouring a glass of wine.

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9 Comments:

At 11:49 PM, Blogger Douglas Blyde said...

I heard the '90 sherry was fuller than the '89. A recession bottle uncorked in a credit crunch!

 
At 4:03 AM, Blogger mrfroopy said...

hey I drink sherry all the time..
I always tell my friends about it
I love all the styles and have a loveley bottle of 71
Toro Alaba PX ( not sherry) in my wine cooler
I mostly drink dry sherrys however.

 
At 4:04 AM, Blogger mrfroopy said...

hey I drink sherry all the time..
I always tell my friends about it
I love all the styles and have a loveley bottle of 71
Toro Alaba PX ( not sherry) in my wine cooler
I mostly drink dry sherrys however.

 
At 4:05 AM, Blogger Vinogirl said...

You be tired if you want to. I think it's a very physical thing...it's a tough job but somebody's got to do it :)

 
At 6:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Please, Jamie, stop describing wines as "funky". It's the preserve of women's magazines and Matt Skinner books.

 
At 8:11 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not sure this is quite what Jamie means by "funky" - I think he means something far more specific. Maybe you could provide an explanation, Jamie?

 
At 8:49 AM, Blogger Justin Roberts said...

Hi Jamie. Was that the Atlas Pub? Who organised the sherry tasting? I think it's a brilliant idea. Nice to see the pic of a Tradition wine. Although you didn't mention it, I think some of theirs are the best.

 
At 9:45 PM, Anonymous tim carlisle said...

Was it a retailer tasting of Sherry? I thought that Raymond Reynolds did the Tradicion stuff?

 
At 11:21 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

Not a retailer tasting - it was organized by Matt Day on behalf of the official body and also Wine & Spirit magazine.

 

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