It’s a hard job …

Last Saturday night I had to work at home. I try to make sure that I leave things behind at the office but it simply wasn’t feasible this time around.

The task in hand was sampling 13 wines in an effort to narrow it down to two whites and two reds to join our chalet wine lists. We already have our house wines, which are sourced direct from the vineyard, but we like to offer a bit of additional choice.

Recruiting a team to help out was not as easy as I had expected. It was all very last minute as I am up at the Birmingham Ski Show this weekend and need to get our order into our French wine merchant next week. A few years ago an offer of free booze would have resulted in a disorderedly queue down the street, instead we had half a dozen (almost tearful) calls flagging up failures to arrange baby sitters.

The six of us that made the cut decided to battle on and dive in. A groaning platter of cheese and hams was laid on to accompany the wines and the first cork was pulled as soon as bedtime stories were out of the way in the Thompson household.

In order to ensure a little order to the proceedings everyone was issued with a score and comments sheet and a spittoon was available to those keen to get to make it to the end of the list! This needed emptying early on as it quickly filled with a large amount of Cave de Turckheim Pinot Gris (2008) – not a popular wine!

Most of my tasting team took their weighty responsibilities to wine loving Ski Famille guests seriously, however we did have a weak link whose score sheet included comments along the lines of “Food match – Roadkill” … you know who you are (Jake). Interestingly this comment was for a very hearty Lirac (Domaine Maby, 2008) that really split opinion. I’m not sure it’ll make the final list but it’s certainly an interesting choice if you like your weighty Rhones.

The surprise of the night was a white that was universally loved. The biggest shock is that it is from the Savoie. There are some good Savoie wines but they tend to be far too expensive if you want to be sure of avoiding instant heart burn. Our tasting panel variously described this Chignin from André et Michel Quénard as “light, refreshing, smooth and with an apple crumble aroma”. It’s a great wine that will go well with a number of dishes as well as making a quaffable aperitif.

The most intriguing wine for me personally was a Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits les Dames Huguettes. As a fan of hearty reds this pale Burgundy was a bit of a revelation. It looked like thin Ribena but had lovely flavours and has encouraged me to explore French reds in a bit more depth rather than routinely sticking to sun baked choices from the south.

So, the burning question is what will our guests be drinking this winter? There’s only one way to find out … join them in one of our family chalets!

Chris
www.skifamille.co.uk