Tasting New Discoveries

The Tastings team started the New Year with our ‘New Discoveries’ tastings, in which we highlighted some of the many new additions to the List. In all there were 20 wines, a healthy mix of wines that are brand-new to The Society and new vintages of old favourites.

Amongst the whites the styles ranged from the lighter – a new grüner veltliner from Austria’s Weingut Stadt Krems and the Chablis Premier Cru Jean-Marc Brocard – to the more gutsy: Château de Cazeneuve’s Coteaux de Languedoc Blanc and the Silbador Gewürztraminer from Chile.

The reds were mostly on the lighter side – The Exhibition Monthélie really stood out as being just like pinot noir from Burgundy should be: light, pretty, with that earthy character which is sadly all too often missing from pinots from that region. It provided an excellent foil to the Prophet’s Rock Pinot from New Zealand, which was still elegant, but showed the other, more masculine side of the variety. The Costières de Nîmes, Domaine Galus and Los Vascos Colchagua Cabernet Sauvignon brought a little muscle to the tasting, and were direct evidence, if it were needed, of just how busy Toby and Marcel (the buyers for South America and Rhône and the Languedoc respectively) have been recently.

The difficult 'mystery wine': Manfredi's Nebbiolo d'Alba

The elusive mystery wine caused some confusion as always – it’s so much easier to guess the grape variety and country of origin when you know what the wine is! Many people thought the wine was from the Southern hemisphere (New Zealand was a popular choice) and pinot noir was the most popular guess on the grape variety. It was, in fact, Manfredi’s Nebbiolo d’Alba, 2008, from Piedmont (£7.50 a bottle). The winners were: Mrs Su-a Lee (Edinburgh), Stuart Williamson (Newcastle), Graham Anderson (Worcester) and Michael Meara (Derby).

As always at the end of the night we took the vote for the favourite wine of the evening. Whilst there were as always a couple of staunch favourites, the lovely thing about doing the vote is that is shows just how diverse members’ taste actually is: the favourite wine on one evening quite often scores low on the following night. How dull it would be if we all liked the same wine!

The votes went as follows: in Edinburgh the favourite wine was Koyle Reserva Carmenère, followed closely by the Costières de Nîmes. In Newcastle it was the Prophet’s Rock Pinot Noir which won hands down, with the Silbador Gewürztraminer in second place. In Worcester the winners were the opposite way round, the Silbador in first place and the pinot second. In Derby New Zealand ruled the roost, with the Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc taking pole position (closely followed by the Prophets Rock pinot).

You can view the full line-up of wines tasted on our website.

All in all a great way to start the New Year – the detox can start in February!

Emma Howat
Tastings & Events Co-ordinator