Last week I was very privileged to be asked onto the 3 man tasting panel of "The World of Fine Wine" magazine. The subject matter was one of my favourites - 2005 Bordeaux and, as you can imagine, like most people reading this, I didn't have to be asked twice. My fellow panelists were the wine writer Stephen Brook (author of "The Complete Bordeaux" and numerous other wine and travel books) and wine educator and super-taster Michael Schuster.
Today the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux rolled into town to show their 2007's for the first time since this controversial vintage was bottled.
Off to our favourite local restaurant for lunch with George and three visitors from France. Ransome's Dock has been Battersea's best restaurant since it opened in the early 1990's. Martin and Vanessa Lam serve delicious "Modern British" food and boast a brilliant international wine list (current AA restaurant wine list of the year). It's held many a Farr Vintners tasting over the years and was also where I met my wife - but that's another story. Ingredients are carefully sourced here from small independent farmers and fishermen and perfectly cooked with no fancy frills. This is a proper restaurant serving proper food, un-poncy and un-trendy and highly recommended by the Farr Vintners team.
On Friday October 9th Farr Vintners held a comprehensive tasting of the 2002 Red Bordeaux vintage. We showed the wines of the 120 leading Chateaux which were served blind in 10 flights of 12. Our panel of experts included Jancis Robinson MW, Derek Smedley MW, Steven Spurrier of Decanter Magazine and Neal Martin of The Wine Advocate. We also had 2 winemakers with us, 4 Bordeaux "negociants" - led by the hugely experienced France Chauvin - and UK wine trade gurus Roy Richards and Barry Phillips.
We recently took part in a fabulous tasting of 33 vintages of Lynch Bages, including every single wine produced from 2006 to 1980 and then a few older bottles. These were tasted at Cordeillan Bages, just a few hundred metres down the road, with members of the Cazes family, their wine-making team and a few friends from Bordeaux.
With the UK office having claimed the blogging limelight until now, we thought it time the HK office got in on the act and showed that it is not only denizens of 220 Queenstown Road, sybarites the lot of them, who like to enjoy themselves every now and then.
