Over a celebration lunch a bottle of Fleurie La Madone. Yes, Gamay I am afraid. Something light for lunch but with a settled, mature palate with enough fruit and tannin to evoke a Pinot Noir. La Madone is a chapel on the hill surrounded by vines , a pretty picture too.
On Sky Arts Channel the other night Henry Miller talks about the pictures - mostly photographs of people - in his bathroom and their associations in his long and richly textured life. I flatter myself a little by thinking that it has something in common with my scrapbook now half way through its second volume.
4 comments:
Ready to open!!!!Enjoy. Mine are still covered with 22 inches of snow (went to measure it).
All of a sudden your comment box is available, perhaps because I despatched a short sharp message to Google about its absence. I see you are (or were) drinking a Beaujolais for which you half-apologise. I should add that I also dislike the Gamay grape as served up in Loire reds (Bourgeuil, Chinon) where it is mixed with the mouldy tasting cabernet franc, another grape I can't get on with, and an area down in the south-west the name of which escapes me.
I toured the Beaujolais villages many years ago, perhaps to confirm my antipathy, and disovered there is at least one thing to be said about these wines: their easily remembered names: Brouilly (hard to pronounce), Cotes de Brouilly, Fleurie, Morgon, Moulin à Vent, Chénas, Juliénas. The rest, it seems, I have forgotten so yet again I've been let down by the Gamay.
Expect longer, less acerbic comments in the future now you're providing the wherewithal.
Seems odd to have to apologise for liking a taste because others don't; whose taste buds are they anyway? Actually not all down to taste buds, as a recent Horizon (I think) revealed; the olfactory perception through the back of the mouth up to the nose, as opposed to that received by the nostrils prior to putting the stuff in your mouth, has more to do with tasting than the tongue does, so in fact the idea of tasting with the palate is not as illogical or merely figurative as it seems.
Those Beaujolais Village names are pretty aren't they? I've just looked up and the others are St Amour (could have been made up my a marketing team that),Regnié and Chiroubles. The Gamay is in fact a very old hybrid of the Pinot Noir, it seems, so RR's aversion may be picking up something there. We had a nice day out once touring round there too, with some Japanese folk. Probably I've already said.
RR Thank you for struggling through. I am glad to see you. Even Chinon can be attractive. I drove up the steep hill into the walled town of Chinon once long ago. We stayed in a hotel where the restaurant's wine list included something like 50 different Chinons of varying age quality and price. It changed my attitude to the grape.
Lucy and RR The apology was made with half a wink. Robbie doesn't like the Gamay grape as you will have read. And I used to associate Beaujolais with the nouveau stuff - a mistake. The different villages, I have learnt, can provide rewarding drinking experiences. The chef Paul Bocuse was a great fan of Beaujolais and wrote a book about it.
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