I admit that I almost got trapped on this champagne. Someone served it out of my attention, while being entirely committed to the discussion with my neighbour at table. So I tasted it blind. After a few sips, the wine challenged me. Having well-recognized the style of PAUL LEBRUN, I was nevertheless unable to determine which of their wines was in my glass. First I took it for GRAND RESERVE, but the wine seemed thicker, softer, despite the many crispy bubbles exploding on my palate. But its perfume was more on red fruits and peppermint, while the GRAND RESERVE will rather go for yellow fruits and flowers, emphasizing its lightness and finesse.

To cut short my suspense, I went to get the bottle in the fridge and checked the label: it was the semi-dry wine of the house, dosed at not less than 37 g / L. If it were a still wine, it would rank among the sweet wines with this amount of residual sugar. In the wines from champagne, however (and in sparkling wines in general), sweetness is challenged by the naturally high acidity of the grapes and the crispy freshness of the bubbles. Therefore sparkling wines appear lighter and more fluid than still wines with the same amount of residual sugar. The semi-dry wine is positioned close to the CARTE D’OR, the “house wine” of Champagne PAUL LEBRUN. Both are made from the unique CHARDONNAY, grown on the Cote des Blancs and the Sézannais further south.

HERBIVORE SUPPORT : Try it as an aperitif, with some GREEN TOMATOE CHUTNEY on toasts. Throw in some FOIE GRAS and you will have a perfect CARNIVORE SUPPORT . You may as well go for a bit of old, dry PARMESAN cheese, he loves residual sugars as much as bubbles...

Without any doubt, the Roussillon area in southern France produces some excellent red and white wines. Despite this, it always remained a synonym for sweet fortified wines to me, some of them with astonishing ageing techniques. Amongst those, the “Solera” system, originally from Spain, certainly is one of the most surprising ways to age wine. To create a Solera, you fist have set up a “Criadera”, by stacking several ranges of barrels. The first range, close to the ground, is called Solera, the other ranges are names first, second, third… Criadera. A Solera being an oxidative ageing system, the barrels are never totally filled up with wine.

The Solera range contains the oldest wine and wine to be bottled is always taken from those barrels, without ever emptying them! A part of the wine has always to be left in the barrels. After that, the Solera barrels are partly topped with wines from the first Criadera, the barrels of the first Criadera with wine from the second Criadera… and so on. The last or highest Criadare will be topped with young wine from a tank. This results in a “mixture” of several vintages in every barrel. Thus a Solera existing since half a century still contains a small amount of 50-year-old wine. In Spain they say, that in a Solera, the old wines will educate the young-ones…

Rivesaltes Solera

A recently tasted bottle of Rivesaltes Solera, bought some 15 years ago, promised to be as complex as the Solera system itself. Though only made from white grape varieties (Grenache gris and Macabeu), the wine surprised with its dark, amber colour and almost black lees that stuck to the bottle. A powerful bouquet rose from the glass: Cinnamon, caramel, dried flowers and tobacco, apricots and raisins, as well as the seductive smell of “old books”. Quit a lot of poetry in this glass…! The wine was pleasant on the palate, but less thrilling than in the nose. Smooth and syrupy, without being heavy. The final got a little hot with alcohol, but I had no problem to pardon this “faux pas” to the old lady.
A wine for cigars, a friend of chocolates and surprisingly good on finely sliced Pata Negra ham…

You may know a different name for this type of wine: Ratafia, Floc de Gascogne, Pineau des Charentes...
What do they all have in common? They are all so-called liquor-wines (vins de liqueur), traditionally called “Mistelles” in France, made from fresh grape must. Different regions, different names but a common tradition: Prevent the must from fermenting by adding brandy or pure alcohol (up to 16 %vol - 22% vol.) to the fresh must.

Thereafter, the fortified must is laid to rest in big glass bottles or in oak barrels for several weeks, months or even years. In fact, these types of wines sometimes show an amazing aging capacity. I had this experience only a few weeks ago, when a friend told me to come over for a tasting of a long-forgotten bottle of his cellar. The label was completely gone, but he knew that it had been there for at least 16 years. Besides the syrupy, golden and amber coloured aspect of the wine, the real surprise came up when I plunged my nose into the complex bouquet of the wine: heaps of fresh mirabelle, delicate fragrances of white flowers, acacia honey, some dried apricots, as well as raisins and rum…

Though, thick and full-bodied on the palate, it showed astonishingly crispy acidity, that carried the well known aromas of the nose, enriched by some sweet oak flavours, towards a very long final. A genuine taste bomb! A wine to savour on its own or together with some noble products, like chocolate, a Tarte Tatin, blue cheese or cigars.

Still having the after-taste of the wine in my mouth, I can only regret the loss of the tradition of making liquor wines in France, as not that long ago, almost every cellar produced these wines as a by-product. So if you are amongst the happy-ones, who still have some old and forgotten Ratafia or Cartagene in your cellar, be sure to plan a tasting with some good wine loving friends soon!

Le Cèdre Vintage 2011, the second vintage of our fortified Malbec wine is bottled.

It’s an excellent wine to celebrate the winter season. It will highlight all foie gras recipes, blue cheese, as well as deserts based on chocolate, red fruits and cinnamon.

Its powerful bouquet offers cocoa, raspberry and truffle, build on luscious and crispy taste, followed by an endless final.

Elaine Lemm, a british food and drink writer in the UK, considers that port (and port-like wine) “...is not however a wine for fast drinking. It demands a leisurely pace, contemplative sips and the company of good friends.”

… the result will be an new wine. After 10 years of reasoning, the Château du Cèdre MALBEC VINTAGE was born.

As they are convinced friends of great Ports, their urge to make a sweet Malbec grew steadily during the last years. Finally their wish was put into reality in 2010.

Selecting grapes from three different vineyards by following their sensory profile – fruity-fragrant, spicy and mineralic – they were separately processed. The point of interrupting this fermentation by adding high percentage alcohol, again was determined by tasting. Subsequently, the wines were blended and aged in large barrels of 500 litres.

The result is a sweet wine with less than 100 gr/L of sugar and about 16%vol of alcohol, presenting full taste, underlined by the acidity of fresh fruits. Ideal to savour with chocolate, desserts, blue cheese, or with fine Belgian pralines among good friends on a chilly day around the fireplace.

“I would like you to taste this”, Roch Teisserenc tells me during one of my latest visits at the winery, while giving me a small bulbous bottle.
Palais Royal (in French “palais” means both palace and palate) is written on the label, with the supplementary notion “Vin de Liqueur”

Despite its size, the bottle seems quite heavy to me. Heavy and compact.
I have the same impression when once the bottle opened, the wine lazily runs
into my glass. A thick liquid, though far from looking like syrup, just gliding more slowly than usual out of the bottle.

Beyond its dark and ruby colour, it shows the slight dimness of unfiltered wines, together with some hues of red brick.
A first nose of dried fruits, chestnut and sultana. Then a second nose, a third one, more ethereal, where a pleasant perception of alcohol makes notes of cherry and blackberries to rise from the glass.
Its mellowness quickly evolves into roundness in the mouth, roundness carried by a continuous and surprising acidity, giving finally space to well constructed tannins
Once they are gone, retro olfaction remains holding delicate flavours, some of them fruity but most of them spicy : vanilla, cinnamon, a hint of chocolate...

A powerful, silky wine, perfectly suitable tailored to long winter nights, good company, Belgian chocolate and good cigars.