Every three years, I am invited to present some wines to the National Westminster Bank Wine Society in central London. There are usually around 40 people wanting to taste a broad range of Southern Rhône wines and tonight I managed to squeeze in a round dozen. For me, as any tasting, it was a good opportunity to revisit some wines I haven't tasted for a while and to see how others are progressing (and, in some cases, just taste them again for the sheer pleasure of it). Inevitably not everyone is going to enjoy every wine - I find that on one occasion I prefer one wine to another but on a different night my opinions may be reversed but, then, I am talking degrees of liking rather than absolutes. The most controversial wine of the tasting was Xavier Vignon's "Blanc": more about this in the next paragraph. The Society has the very sensible policy of starting the meeting with a full glass of the first wine. Meetings start around 6pm straight after work so it is ...
Musings on wine and occasional other subjects from The Big Red Wine Company's James Bercovici