The Wine Bore Thread

[Tom73]

You shold drink the wine where you live, my sugestion is to try some of the Valaisan wine and from Waadt 2009.
http://www.museevalaisanduvin.ch/ges...s_schweiz.html

Also local winemakers are happy to let you taste their wine to sell you a few 100 bottles.

[walterguariento]

speaking of matching wine and food, good place to bump this Italian Wine and Dine in Zurich

[PlantHead]

I'll make a recommendation.

You can get it from RIO's getrankemarkt.
Triple A - 25CHF
Red, very full bodied and made from a variety of grapes. I wouldn't call it classy but it's a great wine to drink with strong flavoured food or on it's own.

[E. Neubauten]

I'm no winebuff either. But I'm definitely with you on this. Follow the "Route du Vin" and you end up in beautiful places where you can taste the wine in the cellars of the makers. You can also take Colmar as a base and do short trips.

And don’t forget the local food.......

Fortunately, the Alsace is slowly getting rid of the dreadful "over-sweetness" where a pinot gris would taste like a gewürztraminer and the latter one like a late harvest desert wine. Needless to say, I like a crispy fruity Riesling.

	Quote:	PlantHead
	Wine Tour of Alsace I did a wine tour of the area last summer and got wonderfully drunk for free. Even though it is an area of France they are allowed to put the grape type on their bottles, mainly because it was for a long time part of Germany. The wine bottles from Alsace are tall, elegant and thin..think of the wine the French Archeologists gives Indie's Girlfriend in Raiders of the lost Arc. The area mainly produces white sweet wines (the red I tried was terrible) Grand Cru AOC on the bottle means it is a premier wine. The big wine from the area is Gewürztraminer, which is a very sweet wine which surprisingly goes well with Asian food. Coop sell a reasonable Gewürztraminer, for me it is a marmite flavour, you either love it or hate it. Riesling of course, however I prefered the ones I had tried from Germany, needless to say it is also sweet. Pinot Gris is basically a white Pinot Noir and is called Pinot Grigio in Italy. The English often call it Tokay. It is also a sweet wine but no where near as sugary as the above two and therefore I prefer it. Sylvaner is Liebfraumilch. Sort of a cheapy grape which is often thought of as bland. I actually quite liked it, which I guess says alot about my tastes. I brought some 2008 Pinot Gris from Bruno Sorg, you can order it online from him and get it delivered in Switzerland. It was the least sweet Pinot Gris I could find. Basically the idea is you go through the villages and try all the different wines from different producers. It's a lot of fun and you don't have to buy anything unless you want to. The really interesting bit is seeing how different each grape can taste when produced by different people, the variety was quite surprising. EDIT_ wow this thread grew quicker than I thought, I expected this to be post 2.

[E. Neubauten]

If you want to drink the wine where you live, why limit it to Wallis or Waadt. In ZH, SZ and whole lot of other kantons you can get very nice wines.

	Quote:	Tom73
	You shold drink the wine where you live, my sugestion is to try some of the Valaisan wine and from Waadt 2009. http://www.museevalaisanduvin.ch/ges...s_schweiz.html Also local winemakers are happy to let you taste their wine to sell you a few 100 bottles.

[portsmouth68]

	Quote:	walterguariento
	speaking of matching wine and food, good place to bump this Italian Wine and Dine in Zurich

I'll tell you what, whoever organised this is one smart cookie!!! Ha ha....

Seriously it should be a good night and the wines have been specifically matched to the foods and even if they hadn't been, they are bloody great!!!

If anyone is interested in learning more about wine, drop me an PM. I regularly run events, with the emphasis on expanding our tastes.

[Treverus]

Ok, some more tips:

My favourite place in the Elsass is not Colmar (while worth a visit) but the lovely village of Eguisheim (not exactly a well kept secret though - quite some tourism).

I absolutely do not agree that Riesling is sweet - in that case you either had cheap Riesling or a speciality as Auslese or Eiswein. Good Riesling is one of the less sweet white wines. And to give away my favourite producer: http://www.bwgtrier.de/
(Not because I am religious, but the bishops of Trier had a century of inquisition to collect the best vineyards from "witches"...)

[Jase]

Only if it suits your palate... Personally I find that I'm not a huge fans of Swiss wines with the odd exception of some from Ticino.

Find them rather bland and over priced.
But have friends who love em!

that's the beauty of wine - so much variety

	Quote:	Tom73
	You shold drink the wine where you live, my sugestion is to try some of the Valaisan wine and from Waadt 2009. http://www.museevalaisanduvin.ch/ges...s_schweiz.html Also local winemakers are happy to let you taste their wine to sell you a few 100 bottles.

[Gastro Gnome]

	Quote:	Treverus
	I absolutely do not agree that Riesling is sweet - in that case you either had cheap Riesling or a speciality as Auslese or Eiswein. Good Riesling is one of the less sweet white wines. And to give away my favourite producer: http://www.bwgtrier.de/ (Not because I am religious, but the bishops of Trier had a century of inquisition to collect the best vineyards from "witches"...)

There are a wide variety of styles of wine made from Riesling. And even some of the sweet ones aren't necessarily cheap or made badly.

e.g.

http://www.josmeyer.com/vins.php?sel...TION&langue=en

[Treverus]

	Quote:	Gastro Gnome
	There are a wide variety of styles of wine made from Riesling. And even some of the sweet ones aren't necessarily cheap or made badly. e.g. http://www.josmeyer.com/vins.php?sel...TION&langue=en

Right, quite the opposite is true: If you have very much sun or harvest the grapes late, the wines get sweet. So "Spätlese" (late harvest), "Auslese" (you pick the best grapes), "Beerenauslese" (even more "picked" than Auslese) or "Eiswein" ("very late harvest - you wait till the first frost") are usually sweeter than the standard wines. But you hardly drink those coincidentally (unless you do not look at price tags...). Easy tip: If the bottle is only half the size of a standard bottle, it is usually something rather expensive and then really sweet...

[portsmouth68]

	Quote:	Gastro Gnome
	There are a wide variety of styles of wine made from Riesling. And even some of the sweet ones aren't necessarily cheap or made badly. e.g. http://www.josmeyer.com/vins.php?selection=6&vin=RIESLING+GRAND+CRU+HENGST +L'EXCEPTION&langue=en

I agree, normally the best ones are sweet even though most people will prefer drier versions. The fact is that given 20-30 years maturing, a beautifully balanced Auslese, Beerenauslese or TBA will develop into the most wonderous thing perfectly balancing sweetness with dry, aged complexity with freshness and fruitiness with minerality.

The trouble was that too many produces in Germany and in particular the Rheinhessen region was making those insipid wines in the sixties and seventies that had no balance. The producers of the Rheingau or Mosel who are looking to produce quality wines, do so at remarkable low prices that have the ability to age as long as any white wine.

Look at any white wine which can be aged and it will typically start off sweet: Sauternes, Vouvray or Vendanges Tardives, Eiswein, etc etc

[Gastro Gnome]

	Quote:	Treverus
	Right, quite the opposite is true: If you have very much sun or harvest the grapes late, the wines get sweet. So "Spätlese" (late harvest), "Auslese" (you pick the best grapes), "Beerenauslese" (even more "picked" than Auslese) or "Eiswein" ("very late harvest - you wait till the first frost") are usually sweeter than the standard wines. But you hardly drink those coincidentally (unless you do not look at price tags...).

Yeah . . . I know about German-style dessert wine classification.

Ah . . . I didn't notice the 'or a speciality' in your original post.

I'm not sure I drink any wine coincidentally

[mepriana]

Tom73 suggested drinking the wines from where you are, and I agree you should give them a shot. Even if only to seem knowledgeable when you have visitors over!

So in that spirit, for those of you who live in or around Basel, if you like sparkling wines, I would like to suggest working your way through the various Crémants d’Alsace. Some are average, a lot are lovely (IMHO) If you quite enjoy chapagne on occasion, you may find you like some of these even better. (Well, provided you're not a label snob!) And you'll find that they are a lot cheaper and often more enjoyable than overpriced champagne.

If you are interested in Alsace wines, I would recommend this site as interesting reading.

Cheers!

[Treverus]

	Quote:	mepriana
	Tom73 suggested drinking the wines from where you are, and I agree you should give them a shot. Even if only to seem knowledgeable when you have visitors over!

Sure. I did in fact buy a box of real Zurich Räuschling (from the "Staatskellerei Zürich"), an ancient grape that used to be very common here. The wine was completely ok, but not exactly spectacular (and of course twice the price of an comparable Mosel Riesling).

I used half of the box as gifts to Swiss friends, who already loved it for being from Zurich alone. So local wine seems to make a great gift here.

[portsmouth68]

	Quote:	mepriana
	Tom73 suggested drinking the wines from where you are, and I agree you should give them a shot. Even if only to seem knowledgeable when you have visitors over!

That's OK for you, you have the fantastic region of Alsace next door, I'll have to put us with some central Swiss neutral wine with piercing acidity and no fruit.

It always makes me laugh when it comes to wine and the number of people who feel the need to tell you what you should and shouldn't do (not necessarily the previous poster).

Drink what you want, when you want, with what you like.

[Jase]

	Quote:	portsmouth68
	Drink what you want, when you want, with what you like.

i'll drink to that!!

and actually I am - a lovely Teusner "The Riebke" - sound familiar

[mepriana]

	Quote:	portsmouth68
	That's OK for you, you have the fantastic region of Alsace next door, I'll have to put us with some central Swiss neutral wine with piercing acidity and no fruit. It always makes me laugh when it comes to wine and the number of people who feel the need to tell you what you should and shouldn't do (not necessarily the previous poster). Drink what you want, when you want, with what you like.

I know, it is a nice spot for wine - well, some of the wines.

I agree with the drink what you want policy - at the end of the day, you're the one you need to please, not anyone else. If you like it, drink it!

[Jase]

if you like your trockenbeerenauslese can i suggest Robert Bauer - mmmmm - fine!

Robert Bauer Trockenbeerenauslese - oooohhh soooo fine (nothing really on the site alas)

[Wollishofener]

	Quote:	PlantHead
	Countries. Basically what is good from where. France : Bordeaux, Burgundy and of course Champagne Germany: Forget Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun and get Riesling, they are sweeter from around the Mosel Valley and dryer from the Rheingau. Not my grape but my misses likes it. Austria: Grüner Veltliner is a white wine grape and goes well with food. I like it a lot, it's pretty light and easy drinking. USA - A bit like France they produce almost everything. California is particularly good for Cabernet Sauvignon, Oregon has a reputation for Pinot Noir and you can get Chardonnay and Zinfandel as well from a variety of areas. Italy: Famous for Chianti, Valpolacelli and Pinot Grigio New Zealand: Sauvingon Blanc is the biggy here, also Marlbrough and Otago make some great Pinot Noirs. Australia: Forgot to put it in, got confused with Austria. Chardonnay is the main wine Australia is famous for, form the Yara hills and around Adelaide. It's also a good choice for Sauvingnon Blanc and I've had a nice Australian Pinot Noir although I don't think they make a lot. .

But some interesting wine producers need to be mentioned :

- Turkey: both red and white wines of remarkable quality
- Lebanon: mainly red wines of superb quality
- Israel: mainly red wines of superb quality
- Egypt: nice table-wines, red/rosé/white.... enjoyable
- Tunisia+Algeria: good mainly red wines
- Morocco: mainly red wines of superb quality
- Malta: small quantities of excellent red wines
-
- Georgia: excellent red + white wines
- Bulgaria: excellent red + white wines
- Hungary: a leading producer of superb wines
- India + China: producing astonishingly remarkable red wines
-
- Jersey, C.I. : one interesting vineyards with remarkable wines
and last but not least, the England, U.K., slowly emerging with really enjoyable nice wines !

[Wollishofener]

	Quote:	mirfield
	I think it's also grown in Italy as Primitivo.

the Primitivo is a totally different product then the Zinfandel. I do NOT like Zinfandel but love Primitivo.

And strongly suppose that Zinfandel lovers will not like Primitivo

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	Quote:	Tom73
	In my opinion you can not classify wine in its flavors, you just like it or not so much and i think you will not want to serve a gewürztraminer with a roast anyway. I wish there are all winebottles made with a screw top or plastic cork preventing the hassel with wrecked winebottles because of a rotting cork.

The screwtops only in the past two decades became what they are today. The plastic cork may be acceptably good in regard to its storage function but is seriously unpractical (opening can be awful)

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	Quote:	PlantHead
	Wine Tour of Alsace I did a wine tour of the area last summer and got wonderfully drunk for free. Even though it is an area of France they are allowed to put the grape type on their bottles, mainly because it was for a long time part of Germany. The wine bottles from Alsace are tall, elegant and thin..think of the wine the French Archeologists gives Indie's Girlfriend in Raiders of the lost Arc. The area mainly produces white sweet wines (the red I tried was terrible) Grand Cru AOC on the bottle means it is a premier wine. The big wine from the area is Gewürztraminer, which is a very sweet wine which surprisingly goes well with Asian food. Coop sell a reasonable Gewürztraminer, for me it is a marmite flavour, you either love it or hate it. Riesling of course, however I prefered the ones I had tried from Germany, needless to say it is also sweet. Pinot Gris is basically a white Pinot Noir and is called Pinot Grigio in Italy. The English often call it Tokay. It is also a sweet wine but no where near as sugary as the above two and therefore I prefer it. Sylvaner is Liebfraumilch. Sort of a cheapy grape which is often thought of as bland. I actually quite liked it, which I guess says alot about my tastes. I brought some 2008 Pinot Gris from Bruno Sorg, you can order it online from him and get it delivered in Switzerland. It was the least sweet Pinot Gris I could find. Basically the idea is you go through the villages and try all the different wines from different producers. It's a lot of fun and you don't have to buy anything unless you want to. The really interesting bit is seeing how different each grape can taste when produced by different people, the variety was quite surprising. EDIT_ wow this thread grew quicker than I thought, I expected this to be post 2.

In case of the Alsace, if you like sweet wines, keep to the Whites. Red Alsace wine should be Pinot Noir based and not sweet. The variety in the Alsace is so rich because they adopted wines and methods in both mainland-Germany and mainland-France.

---

	Quote:	E. Neubauten
	If you want to drink the wine where you live, why limit it to Wallis or Waadt. In ZH, SZ and whole lot of other kantons you can get very nice wines.

ZH, SZ sounds quite normal, but I for a long time did not even know that the Canton of Congo sports its own wine, until detecting the "Leutschner" at Lachen Airfield http://flugi.com/index.php?id=9 It is really good and worth a try

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	Quote:	E. Neubauten
	Follow the "Route du Vin" and you end up in beautiful places where you can taste the wine in the cellars of the makers. You can also take Colmar as a base and do short trips. And don’t forget the local food....... Fortunately, the Alsace is slowly getting rid of the dreadful "over-sweetness" where a pinot gris would taste like a gewürztraminer and the latter one like a late harvest desert wine. Needless to say, I like a crispy fruity Riesling.

I have been again and again in the Alsace since the early 70ies, and the emphasis of the Alsace wines has for all this time been on "serious" wines. The sweet stuff just was for certain Germans, Beneluxers and Brits who had a severe unhealthy love for the syrups and were important guests in the Alsace !

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