Invitation to our monthly tasting – The Winery W9
Monday 11 March 2013
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You are invited to our next tasting on Monday 11th March from 17.00-21.00h at our shop in Clifton Road W9.
One of the highlights of our trip to northern Italy a few weeks ago was stumbling across a ridiculously good Barbera d’Asti in a restaurant in Nizza Monferrato in Piedmont. We were in Piedmont to visit the iconic Scarpa winery and were wading through a bottle of their delicious Barbaresco 1999 when we asked the owner if he could recommend something else from his winelist that was in a similarly unreconstructed and old-fashioned vein. He thought for a moment and said “there is just one other wine I can think of – Guasti Clementi”. The following day, after a wonderful tasting at Scarpa, we hotfooted it around to meet Andrea and Alessandro Guasti and to be dazzled by Andrea’s incredibly mobile and expressive hand gestures. And the wines. The good news is that the Barbera in question arrived yesterday and we will be showing it on Monday. http://www.thewineryuk.com/growers/guasti-clemente/
Our latest delivery of Raphael Trouillard’s Cascavel wines arrived on Wednesday. We’ll be opening one of his herbal, warming reds made at the base of the Mont Ventoux. http://www.thewineryuk.com/growers/cascavel/
One of the hits of last summer’s trip to Bordeaux was finding Domaine de Grandmaison in Pessac-Leognan in the suburbs of the city of Bordeaux itself. Mayi and Francois Bouquier of Grandmaison are literally at the edge of the urban sprawl. Houses finish, there’s a sign for Leognan and there are the gates to their Chateau. They make two wines, one red and one white. On Monday we will be tasting both from the latest shipment. Can’t wait! http://www.thewineryuk.com/growers/grandmaison
Dr Ulrich Stein (the Professor, as our colleague Dan calls him) and his brother Peter have a quirky reputation. Uli’s house is like something out of The Munster Family teetering at the top of the slate slopes overlooking the Mosel at Alf. They experiment constantly and caused a stir a decade ago by planting Cabernet Sauvignon and overturning the authorities that said they couldn’t. Their Spatburgunder (Pinot Noir) is excellent. They have artist and cartoonist mates who design their labels. Traubenflusterer (The Grape Whisperer) is their everyday dry Riesling – tight, lean and crisp – which they produce in one litre bottles. http://www.thewineryuk.com/growers/stein-alf/
Brother and sister team, Hans-Josef and Maria Becker, make distinctive Riesling in their maze-like buildings and cellar by the Rhine at Walluf. The style is utterly traditional and utterly distinctive, untouched by fashion. Maria often turns up beautifully mature bottles from corners of their dark, damp cellar for us. She uncovered another batch of the legendary 1976 Spatlese for us recently. No, we’re not opening that one – we’re going to open some of their mature, dry Riesling 1997 from the Rheinberg, their steeply-sloped (well, steep for the Rheingau) vineyard which is directly on the Rhine riverbank. http://www.thewineryuk.com/growers/jb-becker-walluf/
We do hope you can join us and, as usual, feel free to bring a friend.
Our following tasting will be at The Winery and is slated for Tuesday 16th April.
http://www.thewineryuk.com/tastings/
You can also keep in touch on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/thewineryuk
Giorgio, Ben, Dan and David.
The Winery
4 Clifton Road
London
W9 1SS
(Warwick Avenue tube – Bakerloo Line)
020 7286 6475 T