At last

I - mostly - detest sweet wine, but I do like the occaisional dessert
wine - maybe a Moscatel de Valencia - and I agree - the wine would
need to be at the top of the sweetness scale to get away with adding
much antifreeze.

Or alternatively, just bought by people[1] who don't know what wine is
actually supposed to taste like.

[1] do *not* get me started on that "Great with Chicken"/"Not too Dry"
branded cheap plonk.

 

Aye, now and again these sorts of wines can be quite nice as an
apertif, but some of our local gewurtztraminers actually go superbly
with Foie Gras and similar dishes.

Heh. Don't forget "les Francaises adorent le Piat d'Or" <spit>.

 

I'm put off German/Austrian wine (or in fact anything with a
German-sounding grape) by the awful shite that was marketing in the UK
in the 70s - I'm talking Blue Nun, Black Tower, Piesporter Michelburg
etc. I'm sure there are some perfectly acceptable vintages and blends
available now, but I can't get past the bad memories.

"le Piat d'Og" as I call it.

 

darsy wrote in

I arrived in Trier in the Mosel during a wine festival. I took the
opportunity to try several wines that were being given away as samples.
Supposedly their good stuff. I was not impressed so decamped to the bar
that served the relatively local Bitburger beer. They need to get a few
Aussies or Kiwis into the Mosel to show them how to use the riesling &
gewurz. grapes properly.

 

so it's still shite then? Ace - any counter-examples?

you can get that in my local Tesco.

I've had a few enjoyable aussie Gewurz, actually.

 

*splutter*

That got me.

 

Ace bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along the lines
of:

I've never understood drinking a really sweet wine (Sauterne is quite
popular away from the German/Swiss border) with Foie Gras. It really
kills the taste, IMO.

<G> I just get bemused looks from colleagues when I ask them if they've
heard that.

--
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GSX 1400 - 'Tarts Handbag' (tm) Bike, dead 550/4 Rat
UKRMMA#10 (KoTL), IbW#015, Bob#4, POTM#3

P.S. Remove your_head from the cab. ICQ: 83023471

 

No idea about the Mosel region, but certainly there's a large number
of very good Alsace (white) wines around. Most of it tends towards the
medium or sweet, with very little that I'd call truly dry, even if
they do so locally.

The best of the dry types, for my pallete, is Tokay Pinot Gris, often
used to produce the better examples of Crémants d'Alsace
(champagne-like sparkling wines) but also available as a still wine,
of which there are a good many producers.

Other grape varieties include Pinot Blanc, Sylvaner, Muscat (these
three often blended to form a decent enough slurping wine known as
Edelzwicker), Riesling and Gewurtztraminer (of which there are some
superb 'Grand Cru' examples).

Not true of Alsace, I'd say, unless it's just to bring production
costs down. One of the reasons you don't get much in the way of decent
Alsace wine in the UK is that it tends to be pricey - very little
available even locally for under 5 Euros a bottle, for which price you
can be looking at the cheaper end of the Chablis scale, for example.

So, while I'm not desperately a fan of the stuff, I think it's true to
say that Alsace wines are generally produced to a very high quality.

 

A sweet and spicey wine, like Gewurtztraminer (Wurz means spice in
german) can complement the richness very well - next time you're
having some in a decent restaurant ask the sommelier to recommend the
wine - I was shocked a few years back when eating in 'the Orrery' in
London to be recommended a Hungarian Riesling with the Foie Gras in
Aspic starter, but it worked superbly well. Impressed, I was.

 

360's out of corners now?

 

Maybe I should try it too, considering how often you remind me I should
think before posting.

Nah...

 

Ah, right then. Yes, I'd forgotten that.

 

That's half the price of a Ducati 12k service,
without all the extra bits!

 

The 28k mile service [1] on my Bandit cost me just over 900.

[1] well, the service + header pipe removal and replacement (not
including parts, half a day's labour) + a load of other shite
it needed doing [2]

[2] Ain't it always the way?

 

A year or so ago there were posters up at Chiswick Park tube as part of
a general marketing campaign for german wines.

The concept was along the lines of "You've changed a bit since the 70s,
and so have we. So PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE buy our wine."

I just tend to avoid anything with a label that carries any font that
makes me think of the word 'blitzkrieg' - it's an approach that's
served me well so far.

 

you've just reminded me of a series of (obviously) fake advertisements
in Viz about 15 years ago - one of them was for "Luftwaffe Dangerously
Strong Lager".

 

Wow, almost there!

 

Not pretend I'm sorry to say. I liked Ben and always thought of him as
a decent bloke but I'm also considering taking him off my Christmas
Card list. I've already scrubbed him from my birthday card list. These
damn pills are playing havoc with my emotions. I'm getting moody,
forgetful, emotional and easily hurt. Silly really but it's better
than this time last year [1] when I planned my suicide.

[1] Well better for me at least.[2]
[2] I think.

 

Just needs to add dickless to the list and s/he's hom(e).

--
Alex
BMW R1150GS
DIAABTCOD#3 MSWF#4 UKRMFBC#6 Ibw#35 BOB#8
http://www.team-ukrm.co.uk
Windy's "little soldier"

 

"Kensington Gore"

http://www.starmgc.com/blood.html