Wine group at A.D's 26/04/2010 (TNB)

• Fiano d'Avellino 2008 (Vesevo) Unassuming, fairly simple but quite intense. Very pleasant. Top
• Fiano Cometa 2006 (Planeta) Deeply coloured, green peas, blowsy and vegetal. A bit past it perhaps but in any case horribly overdone to my palate.
• L'esprit de Beaucastel Tablas Creek 2006 Intriguing, quite oily and dense. Interesting wine. Bare
• La Cigare Blanc 2004 (Bonny Doon) Peachy, pleasant, quite soft, gentle wine. Bare
• Hermitage blanc 2002 (Belle) Stinky and rotton.
• Hermitage Chante Alouette blanc 2002 Butterscotch, some minerality, interesting but odd. Thick and varnishy. I'm not that keen. Bare
• Prima Mano 2006 A sort of soft blackcurrant nose, with underlying structure. Quite a modern style.
• Primitivo Ettamiano 2004 Slight spritz. Gamy, yet fairly elegant. Top
• Zinfandel Home Ranch 2004 (Seghesio) Blackberry fruit, fairly powerful and structured but with a certain "hollowness". Top
• Old Vine Zinfandel 2001 (Seghesio) Corked.
• Zinfandel Geyserville 2004 (Ridge) Serious intensity, quite rich (in the later Ridge style) - good finish.
• Zinfandel Geyserville 2002 (Ridge) Serious wine, yet soft and very appealing. A strong
• Saussignac 2005 (Clos d'Yvigne) Light apricot fruit, fairly sweet. Simple but attractive.
• Saussignac 1999 Les Charmes Fairly dry, brown sugar, pleasant but no great depth.
• Rutherglen Rare Tokay Calliope NV (Buller) Raisins and brown sugar, herby and creamy. Absolutely lovely. Easy
• Maury 1969 (Mas Mouraine) Oddly high-toned wine - slightly difficult. Pleasingly clean. Hard following the Rutherglen, but I think this is rather good. Top

Recent wines 24/04/2010 (TNB)

• Chablis 2008 (Domaine de Chaude Ecuelle) A new producer at Raeburn Fine Wines - Chablis Village is not an easy appellation from which to find something rewarding. But this is nicely dry, uninfluenced by new oak and has a pleasant hint of minerality. It's clean on the palate with none of the showy in-your-face presence of something trying to be what it is not. Just what you would hope for (but not often get) from a village Chablis. even
• Savigny-les Beaune 1er cru Les Vergelesses 2001 (Jean Boillot) Quite a lot of oomph and decently concentrated, but this has a woody edge for me that I do not like so much. "Aromatic deviation" (the non-fatal version of pox), or is this just how it is? I have mixed feelings on this. Just at least for this bottle.
• Barbaresco Montestefano 2004 (Rivella Serafino) Very pure and tarry, bags of succulent tannins. The real thing, I think. This will surely be excellent drinking in a couple of years. Perhaps even
• Morey St Denis En La Rue de Vergy 2001 (Lignier-Michelot) My last few bottles of this came to light while organising the cellar. It's quite high-toned, decidedly mineral, and generally scrumptious. I think I like this as much as the good but slightly less focussed wines that I have tried from the more prestigious vineyards of this producer. Perhaps I just like the intellectual quality of wines from further up the hill.