decent

It has been a while since I had my last Gauby, quite a while, but I still remember the yummy cherry flavour of his 2005 red. So I thought the 2004 might be just the wine to have with a duck breast with balsamico glazed baby carrots.

The first thing you notice is the deep, dark, glorious red colour. It is followed by a nose of cherry (hurrah!) and berries with a woodland-pepper-spiciness that finds a good addition in a hint of wild animal smell. The pleasant sensation continues in the mouth where the fruitiness of well rounded cherry-berries is nicely balanced by spicy herbs and a hint chocolate, all of which are presented in a cool, smooth way. The tannins are already well integrated.

It has been quite a while since I tasted my last Wittmann. Wittmann, for those of you who have never heard the name, is a well-known winery from Rhine-Hesse that produces biodynamic wines. My dad loves Wittmann, especially their 'S class' wines, and I do fondly remember one Wittmann S I had a few years ago.

After all this recent writing about German wine guides, we go back to the revisit supermarket wine - only to get seriously confused. Really, this wine is probably the most confusing tasting experience in a long while.

Gewürztraminer is a grape that I mostly know in a French context (Alsace), also from Germany and perhaps Italy. So I was quite pleased to see a reasonably priced Traminer at Sainsburys yesterday - and it is from Cono Sur, who have in the past convinced me with their entry range wines.

In some ways, the biggest surprise about this wine was that the grape I know as Gelber Muskateller (yellow muscat) seems to be know to English speakers as Muscat blanc à petits grains. Does that mean the wine is unexciting or boring? Not at all.

Pale colour with a greenish touch, still lots of small bubbles, almost algae-like at first. A fresh nose dominated by floral, herbal notes with a decent bit of elderflower and some fruitiness. In the mouth the wine is much drier than you would expect it after that intense floralness, but it still packs a nice bit of fresh acidity, combined with elderflower and some bitter apple.

Nicely transparent cherry red colour (good. No tampering and pampering by adding juice from more colour-intensive grape varieties here)
This wine smells seriously good - a real pinot nose of raspberries, sour cherries, and a hint of manure (which is also good - embrace it).

This wine brought great enjoyment to our modest kitchen table - and made me feel vaguely stupid for rambling on about wines five times as expensive with as many adjectives.

Here, three will be enough: fresh, clean, appetizing.

3,75 € for one litre of nice Riesling - beat that, if you can.

Looks quite fizzy, lots of small bubbles, greenish colour. Fresh in the nose. Everything about this wine is very fruity at first, almost like an exotic fruit explosion. Also, it seemed to me somewhat unbalanced at first, going through various stages in a short time, sometimes emphasizing fresh lemony acidity, a little mineral, then suddenly grapefruit.

However, after two hours or so, everything settles down, the mineral gets stronger, the rest of the flavours order themselves around it and a nice and orderly German fashion.

Still very young, but quite nice after two+ hours with air. Especially for the price!