There's nothing better than discovering a wine of a given appellation, class or reputation which exceeds expectation.
Off to Paris for the weekend to attend the 30th anniversary of Willi's Wine Bar. We wander the streets of the 1er arrondissement on Saturday morning and thoughts turn to lunch. I sense that my wife is thinking of somewhere chic on the Champs Elysées or the Boulevard Saint Germain, but I have another destination in mind - ten stops away on metro route 13, deep in the Parisian suburbs. This is the equivalent of staying in Mayfair and deciding to have lunch in Croydon. What was I thinking of? Well, quite simply, while Sophie was trying on handbags in the Rue Saint Honoré , my one-track mind was thinking only of Coche-Dury. Homer Simpson dreams of doughnuts, I dream of Coche.
One of the hardest questions facing any Hong Konger is the classic “where shall we go for dinner tonight?”. The city is crammed with restaurants offering an array of different cuisines – whatever your taste, you are sure to find it here, and survival in such competitive circumstances means that restaurants can only offer the best quality for their very discerning customers. Going out for dinner these days also requires planning if you wish to secure a reservation in the restaurant of your choice. We can easily forget that some countries are facing tough economic times when we need to book more than a week in advance to get into our favourite restaurant.
2003 Bordeaux was the theme as 16 of us sat down at 9.30 am last Friday to blind taste our way through the 100 top wines of the Medoc and Graves. Apart from assembling a comprehensive "who's who" of the left bank wines of Bordeaux, we had also put together an all-star tasting panel that included Jancis Robinson, James Suckling, Neal Martin and the vastly experienced Barry Phillips and Derek Smedley MW.
