The Loire Valley wine Fair 2007
Once again that time of the year has come around when I start making visits to various wine fairs.
First up was the annual fair for the Loire Valley wines, held as usual in Angers on the 5th, 6th & 7th February.
This year I took a friend along for the ride who happens to be a rather good chef. The reason for doing this was to improve my understanding of what good chefs are looking for when they select wines for their menus.
Small wine merchants like me tend to have certain styles of wines which we stock, it's much easier to sell wines that we admire!
Anyway after two days of strenuous tasting we both came to the conclusion that the 2005 white wines had really benefited from the year in the bottle, still showing lots of fruit, good acidity and sufficient alcohol giving some lovely well balanced wines.
The 2006 whites we tasted, were mostly tank samples, the wines not being bottled until April or May. I do believe that 2006 will prove to be one of the best vintages in a very long time.
There was wonderful fruit maturity and ripeness, great acidity and because of the lovely long hot summer, with rain at just the right moments and more sunshine during the harvest, the alcohol levels were a little higher than in other years. Perfect!!
As for the red wines, the 2005 vintage is really showing well now and I know that there will be some new wines of this year on my list, which ones, I will keep you all in suspense until they arrive. I can truly say that if I were going to buy wines to lay down then I would seriously consider 2006 for both red and white. The 2003 vintage was the best year for the red wines in a long time but dire for the whites, where as I think that the 2006 vintage will be stunning for both.
My friend was equally impressed and was looking forward to seeing some of the wines that we tasted on his list.
First up was the annual fair for the Loire Valley wines, held as usual in Angers on the 5th, 6th & 7th February.
This year I took a friend along for the ride who happens to be a rather good chef. The reason for doing this was to improve my understanding of what good chefs are looking for when they select wines for their menus.
Small wine merchants like me tend to have certain styles of wines which we stock, it's much easier to sell wines that we admire!
Anyway after two days of strenuous tasting we both came to the conclusion that the 2005 white wines had really benefited from the year in the bottle, still showing lots of fruit, good acidity and sufficient alcohol giving some lovely well balanced wines.
The 2006 whites we tasted, were mostly tank samples, the wines not being bottled until April or May. I do believe that 2006 will prove to be one of the best vintages in a very long time.
There was wonderful fruit maturity and ripeness, great acidity and because of the lovely long hot summer, with rain at just the right moments and more sunshine during the harvest, the alcohol levels were a little higher than in other years. Perfect!!
As for the red wines, the 2005 vintage is really showing well now and I know that there will be some new wines of this year on my list, which ones, I will keep you all in suspense until they arrive. I can truly say that if I were going to buy wines to lay down then I would seriously consider 2006 for both red and white. The 2003 vintage was the best year for the red wines in a long time but dire for the whites, where as I think that the 2006 vintage will be stunning for both.
My friend was equally impressed and was looking forward to seeing some of the wines that we tasted on his list.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home