Posts Tagged ‘tasting’

spanish wine tasting at the imperial

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

I went along to the Spanish wine tasting at the Imperial this evening. They had around 20 exhibitors from all over Ireland. The usual cork folk were there, plus a good showing from the rest of the country. A few exhibitors didn’t stay around for the public part of the tasting, which is a pity.

Spanish wine tasting at the Imperial

With about 150 wines on offer, I just scanned the portfolio and then asked for recommendations.
I started with 2 from Barry & Fitzwilliam. They were both excellent, and the spiel and the rep was very friendly and informative.
I moved around and tried a couple from Bubble Brothers, Cassidy Wines, Classic Drinks and Searsons.

My three top picks from the evening were (in no particular order):

If you’ve never been to a wine tasting, Blake Creedon had a great guide to making the most of one. It’s a great evening, and you get to try out a range of wines you might not otherwise try. You can really go out of your comfort zone – if you get something you don’t like, just smile at the vendor, gently pour it away and go find something nice :)
In fact, tell them you didn’t like it. They won’t be offended, and they will know what they have that’s different and be able to find you something you’ll like.

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wine alliance tasting at fenns quay

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

I was invited to a preview of some of the range from Wine Alliance this week, in Fenns Quay restaurant.
I’ve heard a bit about them, and I know Maurice from his days at Karwig Wines.
I’d already read about a couple of the wines on Paul Kiernan’s blog, so I was really looking forward to it.

wine alliance

We tasted 8 wines from their range, 2 Spanish, 2 French and 4 Portuguese. All were priced below the €10 euro mark and came in a mix of old school and funky labels.

  • Pegoes Branco 2009 Portugal
  • Stella Blanco 2009 Portugal
  • Mas De Vigneron Blanc 2009 France
  • Pegoes Tinto 2009 Portugal
  • Mas De Vigneron Rouge 2009 France
  • Stella Rosso 2008 Portugal
  • Rojo Mojo Tempranillo 2009 Spain
  • Rojo Mojo Shiraz 2009 Spain

They were all very nice, with the Stella Rosso being my favourite on the night. You wouldn’t go wrong with any of them though.

I’m delighted to see plenty of Portuguese wines on offer. I’ve never even heard of most of the grapes in these wines, but lately I’ve been hearing more positive things about wine from Portugal, so I was very happy to try them. The main characteristic of all the wines from the tasting was smoothness.
There was a range of tastes, but all the wines were accessible and smooth, “easy to drink” was mentioned several times on the night.

Maurice is a great MC for a tasting. He really knows the wines, and the interest and belief that he has in them shines through.

You can follow Wine Alliance and Maurice on Twitter. Have a chat to the lads, they’re very friendly and
maybe you can wangle an invite for yourself!

as usual, my tasting notes. enjoy!

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Posted in food and drink | 4 Comments »

twebt 5 with red nose wine

Monday, June 14th, 2010

twebt is back! and this is the most mysterious mystery bottle to date!
We don’t even know if it’s red or white this time.

twebt 5 will take place at 21:00 on Sunday the 27th June.

Gary over at Red Nose Wine has chosen the mystery bottle for us this time. You can order it here or you can try our a new feature for twebt.
Gary has a special offer on his website, just for twebt people.
You get a case of 6 bottles, one of which is the mystery bottle plus a special selection of 5 of Red Nose’s finest for €80 plus a fiver shipping.

If you chose to order the mystery bottle all by its lonesome, it’ll run you €14 plus a fiver to ship.

Use the coupon ‘Twebt’ at checkout to get the delivery back to €5

What’s twebt?
It’s a blind tasting that we do on twitter. All welcome, all you need is a free twitter account and the mystery bottle. I’ve lots more information here. I hope you can join us!

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Posted in food and drink, wine | 5 Comments »

ready for twebt 3?

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Are you ready for #twebt 3?

The line up is looking great.

Taking part we have at least:

@karwigwines will be giving us the answers on the night.

you might like to follow all the lovely people mentioned above.

remember to stand the bottle upright an hour or two before the tasting. you might want to open it then too – don’t look at the cork!.
Around nine or so fire up twitter and search for the #twebt hashtag and we’ll all have some fun!

I’m looking forward to it and thanks to you all for joining in !

if I missed you drop me a tweet or an email to brian AT brianclayton.ie and I’ll add you in.

mystery wine from karwig wines for twebt, our twitter blind tasting

mystery wine from karwig wines for twebt, our twitter blind tasting

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tasting in kitzbuhel

Friday, February 26th, 2010

I’m on holiday in Kitzbuhel, Austria currently.
I made a quick video of some of the local delicacies.

more when I get back.

and remember, wine is serious business!

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bubble brothers spanish wine tasting

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

bubble brothers wine tasting

this evening I popped along to Bubble Brothers spanish wine tasting. this time the tasting was held in their warehouse in the Marina. The crowd they had in just about filled it – I suspect a couple more people could have been crammed in but only by playing some human tetris.

The wines on offer were all spanish, and ranged from low teens in price up to twenty one odd euro.
Julian was the chief MC for the night, assisted by Billy, Valerie and the nice chap whose name I forgot, even though he’s the one that filled our glasses all night.

Aside from the actual tasting, I heard the best and simplest explanation for the cost of fine wines this evening. The core of the argument is the years of labour that goes into producing the wine – lifting down barrels, turning them and so on. Years of maintenance and you can see why the cost would be higher.

I’ve scanned my notes from the night as usual. I’m afraid my handwriting is atrocious, but you’re welcome to try to make sense of it. Anything written down not in quotes is my own thinking, anything in single quotes was something I heard someone else in the room say, and double quotes was from one of our hosts.

bubble brothers spanish 1

bubble brothers spanish 1

bubble brothers spanish 2

bubble brothers spanish 2

It was another excellent night, with some lovely wines on offer. If you’re interested in trying a wine tasting, and you should be – check their blog.

thanks again Julian et al.

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wine tastings are fun

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Last night I went to my first wine tasting – hosted by Curious Wines at the Ambassador hotel in Cork City.
I had no idea what to expect – I know very little about wine in general so I was hoping to learn something and move outside my ‘choice’ comfort zone.
I was travelling in a party of 4 – my sister and two friends. Unfortunately my friends had to cancel at the last minute. We landed in to see a number of tables laid out with spittoons, glasses, tasting notes and glasses of water. Suddenly I had that feeling you get at the dentist when you see the instrument tray laid out by the chair. No matter, I said hello to Mike and my sis and I took a seat.

Mike opened proceedings and introduced Joyce Austin of New Zealand Boutique Wines. Mike was careful to put our minds at rest and made it clear that things were informal. Joyce was a fantastic MC for the evening, explaining the wines and giving lots of useful information on wines in general, not just the ones she was promoting.

For the procedurally curious, the wines were poured “blind” into the glasses on the table. We then had time to swirl, smell and taste them before she explained what we had just tasted.
You could then either finish the glass or abandon the contents into the buckets on the table.

Curious Wines tasting event

I confess I did taste the intruiging looking bucket at the end of the night. I won’t reveal the results of that taste test though.

All in all, it was a smashing night. I met a number of Irish wine names, everyone was very friendly and in great form. I was stunned by some of the revelations, mainly to do with how different in character a different ‘breed’ of a familiar grape can be.
If you get any chance at all to attend a wine tasting, grasp it with both hands.

incidentally, if anyone wants to see how seriously I take life:
tasting-notes

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Posted in wine | 6 Comments »