Veuve Clicquot, Grande Dame 2004

Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame 2004 was a present from a friend returning from Moscow, and what a present it was! Firstly, the presentation is very slick - although perhaps a touch gimmicky. The box has a tag which, when pulled, turns the inside case around to reveal the bottle. Very faux James Bond, but great fun!

Grande Dame is a "super cuvee" and is a premium expression of Veuve Clicquot's house style. As such, I was expecting richness and opulence with full fruit and a biscuitty mousse. I had recently tried Bollinger Grande Annee 2004 which I expected to contrast heavily (given the differing house styles) and so I noted some of those impressions while I tasted.

I felt that by drinking it in late 2013 we were perhaps risking a touch of infanticide, as this champagne will last for a good decade more at least. Still, good company and good wine go together, so we popped the cork.

Colour: Pale gold

Nose: Crisp, zesty lemon. There's grape with an almost grappa-like intensity. Lemon is very clear.

Palate: Sweet lemon, apricot and peach. As expected, it is on the richer side of the champagne chart and extremely strong and powerful - but not overly flamboyant. There's a slight sense of power being held in check by finesse. There's a really round and fruity style - a sharp contrast to the citrus (esp mandarin) I found in Bollinger Grande Annee 2004 but not far from the richer Bollinger Grande Annee 1997, which had had more time to develop. Peach and nectarine come to the fore in time and the Grande Dame evolves into a sweet, rich toasted brioche. Almost like a Sauternes...

Lovely mousse with no harshness or bitterness. Very fine bubbles.

Finish: Extremely long. It develops in clear stages with red apple coming through and becoming almost caramelised. Lemon brings up the rear to clear the palate and prepare for more. This goes on and on!

Conclusion: I couldn't think of many better ways to spend an evening that to have a bottle of this with good company. This grand Lady demands attention and is lavish in her rewards. Immense power and focused intensity with great poise and elegance. Worth the money? Yes!

Points: 94-95. Exceptional.

Turley Zindandel, Juvenile, 2007

Back to America for this one. First things first - I'm not a wild fan of the bottle design or the label but fortunately it was a present, so my design judgment wasn't a factor. I say "fortunately" because this wine turned out to be much better than it looked. Due to university days I had always dismissed Zinfandel as a grape that was used solely in the production of cheap rosé (hi there, Blossom Hill). To say I was underwhelmed would be a minor understatement... Again, fortunately for me, it wasn't a sentiment that lasted long.

Colour: A lovely clear, deep and pure purple.

Nose: Oodles of dark berries, oak and a hefty dollop of spice. Cinnamon and black cherry intensity with a certain light crispness on the top notes. Much nicer than the insipid rosé I associate it with!

Palate: This is really smooth and mouth-filling. It's busting with fruit and spice but somehow it seems light and clean. A bit of an enigma here. The spiciness lifts the fruit and makes this more than just a fruit-bomb (although it certainly doesn't hold back) while retaining a lovely freshness.

Body: Oomph. Full, but rounded, smooth and with absolutely no harshness - along with the extraordinary feeling that it's actually rather light. I can't work out if this is a hefty beast or a delicate flower. Decent slug of alcohol in there but not oppressive.

Finish: Finishes very mildly and fades with a gentle lingering hint of berries. Excellent balance and decent length here too. A finish this satisfying demands another sip!

Conclusion: What a lovely way to dispel my negative image of Zinfandel. Of course this could have ended up in a cave-man style - a blast of fruit with nothing else - but the balance and cleanness really made it stand out. Crisp and fruity, there's not a hint of mustiness in it. People think it'll last to 2014/15 but I'd say go for it now as it's going down a treat.

Points: 90. Good stuff!

Moss Wood Pinot Noir 2009, Mornington Peninsula

A pal of mine has been telling me to try Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir (he's Australian) for many months now and I have finally given in. After reading a series of excellent reviews for Moss Wood's wines, I felt the need to try a range of their wines (Chardonnay, Cab Sauv and Pinot Noir - obviously from different vineyards).

One thing that I like about Moss Wood (Jancis Robinson calls their Cab Sauv 'The Latour of the Margaret River) is their elegant label design. Another positive is that they haven't overpriced their other wines as a result of the Cabernet Sauvignon's success. The Pinot Noir is available from £17.50-25, depending on where you look and also on shipping, so whilst it is expensive, it is not prohibitively so.

This fellow was drunk at 2 sittings - one at 8 PM and the other at 00:30. Because of the huge differences between the original tasting and the re-taste I feel the need to separate the two:

Nose: At 8 PM the nose was, to me, perfect. It had a magnificent sense of balance and assuredness about it. There was certainly fruit present, but it was perfectly balanced with savoury notes and a lovely hint of pepper to clear the nose at the back. Strawberry, muted raspberry (i.e. no sourness) came in alongside cherry. There's a certain jamminess to it, but not the overpowering sickliness that will have deterred many from trying Australian and other New World Pinot Noirs. It is extremely restrained and refined - the mushroomy savouriness in the middle of the nose really adds to complexity and ensures this wine has 3 distinct areas.

Re-taste Nose: On the re-taste the nose has grown much more opulent, but rather more one-dimensional. There are positives and negatives to this. On the positive, it means that people who are looking for a fruitier wine will be satisfied, as there is a significantly juicier nose while the wine maintains a hint of sourness at the end to ensure the flavours remain at least partially balanced; on the negative, the loss of the savoury edge has removed a certain level of complexity and (dare I say it?) excitement for the taster.

Palate: Flavours as above. This is a smooth, supple, soft and ultra-balanced wine. The sweetness and savouriness offset one another perfectly and this is an exceptionally drinkable wine. It's light on the alcohol and the body is neither too heavy nor too jammy.

Re-taste Palate: On the re-taste the fruit and sourness are much much stronger than the savoury flavours. The wine is now better described as tasting of dried cranberry and strawberry: there's a touch of tartness to affairs and while the wine is still remarkably smooth, the savoury flavours have all but disappeared. There is, however, a decent 'oomph' of spice in there. Oakiness coming through.

Body: The body is extremely light, smooth and pleasant. Tannins are (as expected of a PN) very light.

Finish: The finish is short but nice. Little change between tastings - surprisingly the hint of pepper in the finish has survived to the later tasting. On the re-taste there is quite a hit of oak-spice that has lingered for some time now. Pretty punchy stuff.

Conclusion: I really really enjoyed the first tasting - this was a wine that showed that the New World can imitate Burgundy's finesse at an acceptable price point. Although the second tasting was completely different from the first, in the time I have been writing this review and re-tasting for a third time, it has begun to grow on me as something different, but by no means worse. It is a far more modern expression of pinot noir and it is nice to see that drinkers are offered an option. Drink the wine straight out of the bottle for a more restrained wine, or decant for 2 hours and enjoy a fruitier fellow. I'm not sure if this was deliberate but if it was, it is a stroke of genius! One cannot help but be impressed.

Points: 89/90. Really pleasant - the factor that pushed it to a /90 was that the wine changed so much after time out, offering diversity and complexity. Super wine and a fun one to drink. One of my readers - BB - will be able to confirm this phenomenon, should he wish to comment...

Saint Clair Pioneer's Block 14: 'Doctor's Creek'

I mentioned in my first review that I love Saint Clair as a vinyard. In many ways Saint Clair was the first wine that I really thought about and one that got me hooked on the idea of Pinot Noir and the versatility of grapes in general. Matt Thomson has won a host of awards, including the prestigious for his work at Saint Clair and the Pioneer Block series always deliver - even their Gewürztraminer was excellent, and I am no fan of Gewürztraminer.

I tried PB 15 (as it was in its previous iteration) at approximately this time last year and have since tried several of Saint Clair's Pinot Noirs. The current vintage is 2011's Doctor's Creek, or PB 14 for short. I have now tried it on 4 occasions, 3 of which were tastings, and I feel that I'm on to a real winner with it. I would describe it as an excellent example of  how a New World beast can be tamed.

Nose: SC PB 14 has a lovely intense nose of all the great parts of Pinot Noir - it's a jammy raspberry blast with a hint of mushroom earthiness to back it up. Nutmeg dances around the aroma to give it a hint of depth. An almost ferric hint slips in there somewhere, but is elusive if you look for it. As with Pioneer Block 3, intensity is the buzzword regarding Saint Clair's wines, but don't imagine that it is just intensity. There's also great complexity and this is not a wine to be dismissed as a New World 'fruit bomb'.

Palate: Sweet with the slight sourness that characterises top Pinot Noir. The fruit is held in place and structured with this, combined with pepper and spice backing up the juiciness. This is most certainly not Burgundy - it's juicy and fruity and lacks the savoury 'barnyard' gaminess of top Burgundy, but has much to interest nevertheless. In time (approx 1.5 hours) the spice becomes more pronounced - becoming more Burgundian. Interesting. Excellent.

Body: As an inexperienced taster, this is somewhat hard to describe. In terms of flavour, this is a full-bodied mouth-filling wine but it isn't heavy in the slightest. It is in fact exceptionally smooth, suggesting it's light of body. Whatever the correct description is, it's lovely.

Finish: Is that a hint of menthol, clearing my palate for another glass? Only one way to find out...

Conclusion: With cellaring potential of 5 years from vintage (i.e. up to 2016) it is well worth buying a case or two. It is an easy-going crowd pleaser and will never fail to impress. Serve with slow-cooked paprika chicken or prawns with squid-ink linguine (contact me for a recipe if you want). I have a photo of it somewhere that I should upload... 

Points: Excellent. 91, especially after a little time exposed to the air.