Since we love travelling and we like
booze, we ended up doing a lot of tasting tours on various countries that we’ve
visited. Although the practices may differ from country to country and producer
to producer, the basics remain the same. A typical tasting tour normally
involves a ride in some beautiful countryside, listening to information about
the producer and the product which could be entertaining / interesting /
extremely boring depending on your guide, and finally the tasting so that you
can understand what the fuss is all about.
Since good alcohol and good food goes hand in hand, as an added benefit,
generally there’s a lovely restaurant or a pub around. Add the occasional cute
village or art gallery and you might be in for a real treat.
Below are some of our tastings that
were worth remembering.
Champagne, France
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| Lagerfeld recreated the bol-sein for Dom Perignon , using Claudia Schiffer as inspiration |
Who doesn’t like a glass of champagne?
It’s the perfect drink for a celebration or at the start of an evening. It goes
wonderfully with fresh strawberries and sometimes the mere sight of a flute of champagne
can evoke mouthfuls of hidden delights.
But tasting the bubbly in
Champagne, its original home in France is not just sipping from a couple of
different bottles, it can even border on a holly experience.
First of all, you have to remember
that the prestigious word champagne
can only be used for the sparkling wine produced at the Champagne region in
Northern France. All the other producers must use names such as Cremant
(elsewhere in France), Prosecco (in Italy), or Sparkling Wine (in US) to brand
their produce. Every producer in Champagne repeats this at least twice, so that we can all appreciate:
- Champagne was
originally produced by monks .The most well known of them is Dom Perignon , a
17th cc Benedictine monk who had redefined the champagne making
process and had his name given to Moet & Chandon’s prestige cuvee. He’s
famously quoted as calling to his brothers one day ‘Come quickly! I’m tasting the stars.’
- Champagne was
the favourite drink of gods like Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte. Marie
Antoinette enjoyed sipping her favourite bubbly from bol-sein, a cup modelled
after her own breasts.
- The producers
of the Champagne region are blessed to be making this heavenly drink worthy of
royalty and they’re doing a huge favour by allowing mere mortals like us to
drink it.
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| The caves at Mumm |
Well, they are correct on all accounts but some of them just overkill while
delivering the message.
Having said that, tasting is a
great experience in Champagne and every major house tries to add a twist to
make the experience even more attractive. The major estates are working or worked with
artists like Lagerfeld, David Lynch and Andy Warhol to create images and
objects to capture our imaginations as well as our taste buds. As a result, Moet
& Chandon has great stories to tell ranging from Dom Perignon to Bonaparte;
Mercier has the underground laser operated train; Veuve Clicquot has the
designer goodies and Mumm has a great cellar and Formula 1.
After tasting champagne at a few
of the great names, you can also visit a couple of the hundreds of small
producers in the region who produce great champagne and anxious to introduce
you to their world with very attractive prices.
Bordeaux, France
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| The vineyards of Medoc |
In a typical wine tour at a chateau in Medoc, the guide first takes
you the vineyards to talk about the soil and exact percentages of the different
varieties of grapes and average ages of the vines. Then you move on to the Vat
room where they explain how meticulously they clarify and mix the wines.
Afterwards you continue to the cellars to learn about the precise age and origin
of the barrels and the aging process. Finally when you find yourself in the tasting
rooms, your head is bursting with all the information and you really need a drink.
Naturally after visiting a couple
of Chateaux, we started to have very weird arguments with my husband, such as ‘No
no, you never listen! It was 4% of Cabarnet Franc and 2% of Petit Verdot, not
the other way around.’ Luckily, both of us were feeling quite happy from all
the wine so the argument didn’t escalate to the best wine aging methods.
One of the main problems of wine
tasting in Bordeaux is the other people wine tasting there.
If you happened upon a Chinese or
Japanese group (I say group because
it seems they’re forbidden to travel alone), just step aside and wait for them
to pass on. They would be extremely noisy and rude, and they have to take photographs
of absolutely everything at least three times. If, in the process they block your
path or step on your foot, tough luck. Luckily, they would not be interested in
anything other than their cameras so they will not listen to their guides and
move fast to the next photo opportunity.
If you share a tour with American
wine enthusiasts, you might be in for a treat. I’m not talking about the
average tourist or the true enthusiast. There’s another breed, rich and
in-the-know, and they are a joy to watch from
a distance. We recently shared a wine tour at a Grand Cru Chateau in Medoc with
such a couple and they made my experience memorable. It was just us and them et
bien-sure their own private wine expert. Poor guy.
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| Chateau Haut Brion - from inside |
At the beginning of the tour, even before the expert
of the chateau started her sermon on the precise age and varieties of the vines
in this particular vineyard, one of them asked their expert about a recent
article on Robert Parker’s web site on Bordeaux wines. ‘Ah the web site’ replied the expert, giving us a knowing smile. Their continuing monologues
were serving one purpose only, to show how much they know about ‘this wine stuff’. In about two minutes later, the two French wine
guides started to chat among themselves, my husband decided to imitate the
Japanese with his camera and I was left to suffer and occasionally nod.
When we finally arrived at the
tasting room, the woman asked the local guide why they were offering the wine
in bottles instead of carafes. Even
before the guide could open her mouth (who would probably say ‘because this is not a restaurant, dumbo’),
the husband commented rather rudely about his wife’s carafe addiction. Since I
was the only one around, the woman went on explaining to me how she liked
purchasing different styles of wine carafes and using them as decorative items
in the house. Feeling slightly sorry for her, I told that I prefer serving reds
in carafe as well. The husband then asked me:
'So you buy a different carafe every time you go
to shopping?'
'Well, no.'
'Do you also put full carafes around the house, all filled with expensive wine from
your husband’s personal cave ?'
' ...?'
#
Bourgogne, France
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| One bunch out of a hundred |
Since we had done the ‘Route des
Chateaux’ very recently in Bordeaux, we decided to skip the ‘Route des Grand
Crus’ in Bourgogne this time and decided to visit a wine cellar instead. We
chose one of the biggest cellars of Beaune, the ‘Patriarch Pere et Fils’ which
turned out to be a very different experience. In exchange for 10 Euros per person, they gave
us a couple of tasting cups and let us loose in the cellars. The Patriarch
cellars turned out to be a 5-km long underground labyrinth filled with thousands
of bottles around which we were free to wander without a guide. It was slightly
thrilling to find our way in the dark maze of bottles, most of which were not
even labelled. We wondered if somebody
was taking a bottle here and putting it there, just for fun.
When we finally found the tasting
rooms, the experience got even more interesting. We found out that they opened some bottles and
put them on top of barrels in four or five different rooms which we were free
to taste as we like. It was a refreshing experience to taste in the order and
amount of our choosing, without an expert explaining how the wines were
supposed to taste.
So we took our
time and try not to drink all of the 15+ bottles left for our pleasure. Needless
to say, we ended up getting drunk and buying more wine that we intended to, but
we had a great time.
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| Hospice des Beaune |
Another
interesting thing in Beaune was the Hospices des Beaune, a 15th
century hospital and refuge for the poor and a beautifully crafted building. It offered treatment and comfort to
the sick, elderly or the destitute non-stop from the Middle Ages to present day.
Many rich people, including the Sun King himself, have made rich donations to
the Hospice, farms, buildings and of course vineyards; therefore the Hospice
started to produce it’s own wine, which is very good and highly prized.
The Hospice
is also organizes an annual wine auction since early 18th century,
which is used to define the annual prices of the regional wines.
Chateauneuf-du-Pape,
France
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| Sunset over Rhone |
Chateauneuf-du-Pape
is a lovely town surrounded by vineyards which produce some very good wines. There
indeed is an old chateau, from which the little town – and the wine- get their
names.
We’ve visited
the town at a Sunday afternoon in late autumn and enjoyed an exceptional sunset
over the Rhone valley. Afterwards we stopped at a small wine cellar for a bit
of tasting and shopping and went to a bar for a bit more. Nice town, friendly
people, good wine, a wonderful ending to an unforgettable weekend.
Napa Valley, California, USA
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| Couldn't resist putting this |
First founded by the Italian and
Swiss immigrants in early 1900s, Napa Valley today has become one of the most
important wine growing regions in the world. As in most things, when it comes to wine making
the Americans are making their own rules and as a result they start to beat
French and Italian wines in their own game in international competitions.
Years ago while driving around
California, we’ve spent a day there visiting the Mondavi estate and listened to
the tricks of wine tasting (you have to smell
it before drinking!). There was also a rather lengthy comparison of New World
Wines against Old World Wines, which sounded a bit like a preparation for WW3. We
were quite young then and taking the tour with close friends, so it was a day
of laughter and fun, accompanied with some decent wine and a picnic basket. I’m
pretty sure their tours have improved in the meantime to catch up the quality
of their wines.
Santorini,
Greece
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| A typical wine tasting at Santorini |
While spending
a week in Santorini a few summers ago, we decided to visit one of the wine
producers which turned out to be a very fun experience. When it comes to wine tasting, the Greek have
the rather admirable philosophy of ‘Cut the crap and let’s get drunk’. They basically take your money, give you 3 or
4 very full glasses of wine with some crackers and invite you to drink them at
the terrace. The wines were decent and the views from the terraces were
breathtaking. We liked the experience so much; we did a lot of wine tasting at sunset on our way from
the beach to the hotel.
Stellenbosch,
South Africa
Africa is beautiful and the wine
region of Stellenbosch was no exception. We spent an excellent day driving the
Wine Root and stopping at the estates advised by our local friends. South
African wines were shunned by the West because of the Apartheid and only in the
last decade they started to become popular.
I loved their white wines, managing to be fruity and dry at the same
time. The reds were also quite good with heavenly smells, but I’d pick a South
African Sauvignon Blanc any day.
Wine tasting was a friendly
affair, nothing pretentious, mostly about promoting their award winning wines
rather than explaining the philosophy of the wine producer. Most of the estates either have their own
restaurants or offer picnic baskets with the wine of your choice in their lush
gardens. We opted for the second option
and had a great picnic under the trees overlooking the beautiful countryside.
Afterwards we spent some time in
the town of Stellenbosch, which turned out to be a pretty little town with
Cape/Dutch style buildings, art galleries and shops selling everything you
don’t need but want to buy anyway.
Scotland
I started to drink whisky when I
was nine or ten years old and it’s still one of my favourite drinks. My father
owned a large collection of whisky & cognac that he obtained from all
around the world and as a curious kid who was always looking for mischief I
started to have my private tasting tours to his whiskey cabinet at a very early
age. I was mainly tasting from the
small bottles that were given as presents and filling them with tea afterwards
so I didn’t go into a lot of trouble but I developed a taste for great whisky
and learned the differences between a blended whisky and single malt.
My favourite method of whisky
sampling in Scotland turned out to be finding a good bar with a friendly
barman, preferably in a small village or town, and start ordering the local
favourites. It would be a challenge to pronounce the brands like Dahlwhinnie or
Bunnahabhain especially after a couple of rounds, but the pleasure of drinking
those great malts will worth the effort.
Northern Ireland
Recently we visited Northern
Ireland for a few days. A very friendly Irish barman (is there another kind?) told
me that while the Scotch can produce some great whiskey some of the time, the
Irish can do it all the time. He also told me that the Irish spell whiskey with
an ‘e’ (the correct way) while the Scotch pronounce it as whisky (the poor
way). At least that’s what I gathered
from his accent. A few days later we
visited the Jameson distillery to learn about why it’s triple distilled (I still
have no clue) and to taste some of their great samples.
With all due respect to my friend
the Irish barman, I still prefer to drink Scotch malt and order a Guinness at
an Irish pub.
Belgium
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| Abbeye Notre Dame d' Orval |
It’s impossible to live in
Belgium and not to enjoy beer. There are over 450 different types of local
beers, most of them served in their own special glasses which are supposed to
enhance the flavour of the particular beer for which they’re designed. My
personal favourites are the Trappist beers that are produced by the Trappist
monks at monasteries and abbeys. There are six monasteries in Belgium which are
producing this special beer, together with cheese and other local products. I
prefer Orval and Westvleteren among others.
The Westvleteren 12 is regularly
rated as one of the best beers in the world. It’s extremely good but almost
impossible to find, there’s even a black market for it. Drinking Westvleteren beer is truly a unique
experience for two reasons; it tastes great and it’s very difficult to buy. It
is brewed by a tiny abbey named St. Sixtus of Westvleteren, some 150 km outside
Brussels. The abbey makes only three
kinds of beer (the 12, 8 and 6, the names are corresponding to the alcohol
percentages – yep, Belgium beer is strong stuff!) and in miniscule quantities.
So why didn’t you hear about it
before? The problem is the supply. The monks are producing beer only 72 days a
year and sell it either directly to individual buyers or at the visitor centre
just outside the abbey. Buying the beer directly from the abbey is almost as
difficult as, say, going to heaven. They only sell their beer two days a month by
reservation only and in limited amounts (two cases per car). Or you can always drive
up to the Visitor Centre, which in fact is a huge bar in the middle of nowhere and
order as much as you can drink. As bars go, it’s not too bad and always
crowded. In the little shop inside the bar you can even purchase beer by the
bottle, although the 12 is rarely on sale.
The monks of St. Sixtus are not
interested in increasing the revenue or winning awards, because a- the money
they earn is enough to cover the annual expenses of the abbey and b- their patron
saint St. Benedict advises against greed and teaches humility. In this capitalist era, they somehow manage to
keep their faith as strong as the beer that they produce.
One thing I enjoy more than drinking
these wonderful drinks is to share it with my loved ones. Whatever we choose to
drink always tastes better than any Grand Cru accompanied with laughter or
gossip or even tears, as long as I can share it with my family and friends.
So this one is for you guys. Şerefe !
