The Wine Rocket Experience

 Hello everyone! This week's wine of the week is Domaine Gadais' 2020 Le Pélerin Muscadet. Muscadet is an appelation in the Loire Valley, France, around the city of Nantes; facing the Ocean. The wines from this AOC are fresh, acidic, sometimes simple wines, based on the Melon Blanc grape variety (known also as Melon de Bourgogne). This wine is a perfect example of a Muscadet. The bouquet is dominated by green apple and lemon peel with some hints of flint, a fairly simple aroma profile.  it is very refreshing with a saline finish. Ane asy going, refreshing wine, perfect to be enjoyed on a summer day with some fish based dishes. Very cheap, sitting at 8,50 a bottle! Reccomended as a cheap and cheerful glass.

 Hello everybody! Wine of the Week #2 is Chateau Simone's Palette Blanc AOC. This wine is a Southern France white blend of Clairette, Grenache Blanc, Bourbolenc, Ugni Blanc and Muscat Blanc. I have to thank my dear friend Simone, head waiter and sommelier of Room Food&Drink in Bassano, for introducing me to this lovely gem! The wine is spontaneously fermented after a light pressing. It then ages for 6 months on the fine lees and then another 12 months in small oak barrels. Once poured the wine shows itself with a golden colour and feels heavy. The aromas start off with flint, smoke, toast, vannilla, cloves, quince and hawthorn flowers. The bouquet is surrounded by straw and grass, it really reminds me of a summer afternoon in a farm house. The acidity is medium+, enough to balance the full, powerful oaky body. The saline finish complements perfectly the buttery mouthfeel. Overall a high quality wine that will show its full potential with another 3 to 5 years of bottle ageing. G

 Good morning everyone! I am starting a weekly column: Wine of the Week. Every week I am going to choose a wine I have tried an liked and then I am going to write a quick review about it. This way you will all have the chance of getting to know new wines. The lucky first is Frank John's 2017 Pfalz Riesling. Riesling is one of my favourite varietals and this wine is an excellent example. The grapes have been grown biodynamically and are harvested through several passes in the vineyard to ensure perfectly ripe grapes.  The fermentation is spontaneous in big wooden casks (1200L and 2400L), it gifts incredible complexity to this wine. It then ages for 1 year on the fine lees after it has carried out Malolactic Conversion fully, this allows for a full body and creamy mouthfeel. The bouquet is enticing with green apple, apricot, ripe peach, grapefruit and honey all being sorrounded by spicy and flinty notes of sage smoke and toast. I bought it at my local wine shop fro 24,90 Euros which,

 Hi everybody, The dreaded D3 exam dates: the 26th and 27th of October have come and now passed. After 5 months of dedicating basically every waking hour to studying I sat the WSET Diploma D3 Exam; probably one of the most difficult exams I have ever had to take. The D3 Exam of the Diploma is a two day examination based on 'The Wines of the World', basically its enography and ampelography of the most important grape varities, wine styles and GIs from all over the world regarding only still, unfortified wines (the D4 and D5 exams are dedicated to the Sparkling and Fortified Wines of the World).  The book spans some 600 pages of just bulk information on the wine regions in the world, starting of course from Bordeaux, France, through the USA, Australia, Argentina and ending in China. As I have already told you the spectrum of information given is huge and honestly 5 months to prepare were barely enough I thought. But let's talk about what you're here for: the actual exam.

 Hello everyone, It has been a while since I posted and I am sorry, the D3 exam preparation is taking up ALL of my time! Anyways... What regions spring to mind when you think about Sauvignon Blanc? The Loire Valley? Marlborough, New Zealand? Maybe Bordeaux's Pessac Leognan Blanc or California's Fumé Blanc? Well you have to know that in South-East Austria, on the border with Slovenia, there is a region called Steiermark which is now famous for producing excellent wines from Sauvignon Blanc. Glass of wine with a view Maybe this wasn't a surprise for some of you, most probably people living in countries such as the Netherlands or UK, but you have to know that in Italy we really don't get Austrian wines so this was a pleasant discovery! View from a hill of Styria's landscape As I said Steiermark, or Styria, is in the South-East of Austria, bordering Slovenia. It is a region of rolling hills, steep vineyards, breathtaking views and has made a name for itself for Sauvigno

 Hi Everybody! Last week I headed to Alto Adige with Eno Club, a wine shop in Milan, to visit Girlan and the Kaltern cooperative winery.  Alto Adige has many cooperatives and almost all fo them focus on high quality wines, opposed to the rest of coops in Italy which focus on high volume, moslty inexpensive wines; of course there are exceptions. Girlan Kellerei is in Cornaiano, it works the grapes of 200 growers with 220 hectares overall making 1.3 million bottles a year. Their main focuses are Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Vernatsch. To incentivize quality they pay quite a lot of the grapes (up to 2.5 Euros per Kilogram!) and the winemaker also visits every vineyard, offering counsel and advising the growers to reach the perfect level of ripeness and technical characteristics needed to make each wine. The winery has grown quite a lot since its inception in 1923, the expansion has been built around the old underground cellar dating to the 16th century called T