2020, and Wine Club starts a new year....

At the start of each new season for the Freeland Wine Club for the last four years we have started with the first meeting being given by the very able and knowledgeable speaker  Toby Chiles.

For this year, we were to go to Australia for our wines and wine choices, but not the wine that is so often associated with Australia, Chardonnay, none to be seen but rather a selection of grapes and wines all very new to the members.

Toby did as ever, a great job in sourcing interesting choices of wine but also did a great job of entertaining and informing.

He is a master of the stand up / sit down quiz.  Not complicated, and with the multiple choice answers numbering two you might think it would be a breeze, a breeze it wasn't but very entertaining it was.

Normally I would now go through the various wines but on this Blog I will first show the winners, you see we had number of trivia quizzes and those that know the Wine Club will be aware of the high level of competitiveness  that comes out whenever the word quiz or competion is mentioned, so the winners:

 And the wines:

We enjoyed 8 wines, one white, two sparkling wines, three reds and two sweet wines.

All accompanied by various cheeses, these were a soft Brie de Meaux, two hard cheeses to accompany the reds, a Wensledale and a mature Gouda, the sweet wines had a choice of chocolate, 70% cocoa or a French Roquefort.  All worked very well.

The wines.

An easy drinking wine, a term that can be interpreted many ways but in this context a pleasant wine but not a remarkable wine.   Certainly citrus notes and maybe a touch of ginger there. 

Pinot Noir, within the bottle and available form Waitrose, Those that love Pinot will enjoy the crisp and cool 'fizz' .     A very slight blush to the colour of the wine harvested in the cool of the night in the Adelaide Hills.

A great label to this Fork and Spoon sparkling Shiraz, but maybe a red fizz too far, some enjoyed but a lot found the concept of red fizz daunting. The question of what would you drink this with and why?  But then the price is an incentive.(£5.99)

This was a super wine, the grape associated with Italy and the Tuscan Barolo,  so here you have an Australian Barolo and this is a fine wine.  Better with a duck or hearty meal that will allow the wine to cut through the richness of the foods.

The best received wine of the evening, a delightful Cab Sav, just soft, lovely. From Amazon!

The follow the Cab Saves would never be easy, but this wine was a worthy wine, better with foods and very acceptable.

Then the 'stickies" oh yes!

Toby was telling us of the challenges of making wines like this, huge numbers of grapes are needed as the grapes are withering on the vine, so no wonder the cost is higher but then only a small amount is needed and the depths of flavours are immense. Of the two this was the weaker I felt but still a worthwhile wine.

...And what does the label say, aged 8 years in barrel, jutst gorgeous. and fortified to 18%.  A cracker!

Thanks to all for making the evening go so well, if there you will know that we had large turnout, the largest in fact to date, but all worked well and only down to us all working as a team.

Have good 2020 to all and see you at the end of March

B