Hey man,
Well, I went out to Franschhoek yesterday to another group of farms. Started off in Allee Bleue in their new tasting rooms, where had some good wines. They had a good Sauv Blanc (not so strappy at all), and their Rose was decent. The blend was fantastic, L'amour Toujours, but a wee bit on the expensive side.
Next stop was Solms-Delta who had some very unique wines and blends including varietals like Clairette Blanche, Grenache Noir, Carignan, Muscadel and Muscat D'Alexandrie in their blends. They love to dessicate their grapes on the vines, so they have a lot of raisony smells and tastes to their wine. They had a lovely rose, but overall, I wasn't that impressed. Good, but not spectacular.
After that I dropped in to L'Ormarin, which also had a different tasting room than the last time when we were there. The tasting is quite expensive (R30) but includes a shuttle transport up to their tasting room and back, past all their lovely horses and houses. Their wines impressed me much more this time round though, and I bought a bottle of their Pinot Grigio (which was much better than last year), which you'll remember we thought might be corked the last time, as well as a pretty expensive, but super-nutty port. All their wines were much better this time round, and I also enjoyed their Sangiovese/Merlot (Arne) blend - which would've gone superbly with pizza/pasta (I could even smell the tomato paste).
Then came Graham Beck, which I was expecting to be the highlight of my trip, with the Brut Rose and all, but was incredibly disappointed with in the end. Actually I was pretty fucking pissed off afterwards with the treatment I got there. First, when I got there the lady said I could taste five wines in a tasting, I asked if I could taste all of them, and she very abruptly told me no I can only have five because the tasting is free, then left and ignored me to pour some drinks for another couple. When she did get back to me, I asked to start with the Brut Rose, and again, she said no, they don't serve the Brut Rose and then pointed out the two MCC's they don't serve. So I asked for the Brut, which she poured and then left again, making no attempt to ask me if I wanted to know about the wines or anything - which I can understand if it's busy, but the other couple had already left and I was the only one there. I was contemplating on whether I should just leave then and there, but I think after seeing my very unimpressed face, my exceptional swirling and spitting skills and my scribbling into my notebook, she became marginally more civil, so I at least drank my 5 selected wines rather quickly, bought a bottle of their Brut Rose (which I was contemplating on not doing, but realised I shouldn't blame the whole farm for one stupid lady), and left in a very pissed off mood. Worst of all was that I actually got their in very good spirits after L'Ormarin's lovely port (of which I had been given a very generous portion).
So off I drove to Lynx farms, which is quite a small farm, and completely changed my attitude back to a very positive one. I was served by the assistant winemaker at the farm. Unlike the farm before, Suzaan was a great hostess and we spoke quite a while about all sorts of things. The first wines I had there were two rose's - one very pale and one that had seen quite a bit of skin, both of which were easy-drinking picnic style wines. They had some very interesting reds, including an unfiltered/roughly filtered Shiraz. They were all pretty soft, but chewy wines, which was just aces in my book. I was also lucky enough to get a look inside their cellar (which, if I recall correctly, is the smallest in Franschoek) as well as get a really helpful dose of an accidental, but fantastic dessert wine that they had made (which wasn't for tasting or for sale and they only had about 4 bottles left). Apparantly they still had a whole lot of Shiraz grapes on their vines after making their other wines, so decided to try and make a dessert wine out of it, which ended up being quite lovely. How often have you seen a Shiraz sweet wine after all? Funnily enough, it seems like it's the wines they put the least effort in that comes out the best... quite funny actually.
I managed to squeeze in one last farm - La Motte, and went through their wines and tasted their 95 Cab Saub, which was actually beginning to taste a bit tired and past it's prime, although it was still good, although not nearly as spectacular as I hoped. Their other wines weren't anything to write home about, the Cab Sauv was actually quite sad, in my opinion, although the Shiraz was also quite lovely.
The strange scent of the day - which amazingly I picked up more than once, was a candy-floss aroma - although to me it smelt more like toffee-apples, but it's pretty similar, I guess. I'm just more familiar with toffee apples, and the one even had a slight scent of apples to it as well.
Val.
Me, Myself and Mwa
- Val Teixeira
- Wine Lover Extraordinaire and avid Wineland Traveller. I'm a student and spelunker of wine farms.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment