Dessert Wine can provide the perfect finish.
After a wonderful meal shared with great people enjoying lively conversation and eating delicious food, and maybe even with some well-chosen wines, our thoughts and desires often turn toward something sweet. It really is a tasty way to finish off the meal. And wine can play a great role in that finish. This article will explore various dessert wines that can provide the perfect ending to an evening well spent.
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André Clouet Un Jour de 1911.
This series of articles will focus on the top wines from a number of Champagne Houses. In Champagne these top wines are referred to as that house’s “Tête de Cuvée”. The Tête de Cuvée will be made from a strict selection of the best barrels from the best vineyard parcels. The Tête de Cuvée is very limited in production, but it is very important to the Champagne house as it represents the best of the best, the crowning achievement that defines what the house is capable of.
Champagne André Clouet is one of the oldest houses in Champagne, having been producing wines since 1741. We first wrote about their top wine, Un Jour de 1911 after we encountered it while dining at the Herbfarm in Woodinville, Washington. That article focused mostly on the historical significance of that day and what it meant to the future of Champagne and the Champenois. In this article we want to continue the theme of the Tete de Cuvée series and talk more about what goes on behind the scenes to make the wine as special as it is.
Read MoreMerlot is so many things it is hard to know where to start: it is grown all over the world and is the third most planted wine-making grape variety (any guess what the first two are?); it is one of the primary grapes of Bordeaux; and it is the grape that was famously trashed in the film and book “Sideways”. It also makes Petrus, often cited as the most expensive wine in the world.
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Some of the beautiful organic vines at Youngberg Hill.
It happened quickly. Oregon has for several decades now been known as a producer of some excellent Pinot Noir. Its cooler climate was capable of producing Pinot Noir that, at its best, could be subtly nuanced, refined and elegant. Comparisons with Burgundy would come up in conversations among the wine cognoscenti and then in the wine press. Pinot Noir had put Oregon firmly on the wine map. In fact, Pinot’s dominance made people associate Oregon with Pinot Noir, to the point where “Oregon equals Pinot Noir” is a common mindset in the same way people think Napa equals Cabernet Sauvignon. No wonder people think that, as the Willamette Valley Wineries Association has on their website landing page, in bold all caps type: “WE ARE PINOT NOIR”.
Of course, neither of those notions is really true, it is just a common perception. In Oregon that perception is starting to change, and wine drinkers are starting to take notice of some of the delicious Chardonnay being produced in Oregon.
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Rolf de Bruin.
The word ‘pioneer’ gets bandied about a lot, but it truly takes vision to open the first commercial winery nowadays in a region with barely any viticultural history. It certainly wasn’t the first place Rolf de Bruin and his wife Heleen Pannekoek had considered for a winery when they emigrated from Holland, but heading into their 11th harvest, they’re already making their mark on BC’s rapidly developing wine scene at Fort Berens.
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