Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir Prima Donna 2009 – Waipara Valley, South Island, New Zealand

Also notes from a vertical tasting

Having already announced Pegasus Bay Prima Donna Pinot Noir 2009 as the “Most Auspicious Wine for Chinese New Year 2012 Year of the Black Water Dragon year”, I had in fact already singled it out as my “Red Wine of the Year”, so impressed by its sheer profoundness and energy, yet harmonious elegance. Read More >

The stars must have been aligned and a flower day in the biodynamic calendar as our bottle of Maison Joseph Drouhin Clos des Mouches Rouges 2008 blossomed in the glass moreover sublime with our Peking duck over lunch at Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck, surely the best duck to be had in all Singapore. Read More >

When you have been in the wine trade long enough, in my case 30 years, there are certain wines that you follow as benchmarks; a sort of palate calibration that you undergo every year (vintage) as an imperative to get a bearing and setting a course into an ocean of wines to be tasted.

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Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau 2011

Jean-Paul Thévenet Morgon Vieille Vignes 2010 – Cru Beaujolais

November 16^th – the most auspicious day of the drinking calendar – the Wandering Palates birthday and the day when the wine Feng Shui is at its zenith. Read More >

On my first trip to burgundy, some 20 years ago, I discovered the appellation and white wines of St. Aubin.

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2009 Villa Russiz Sauvignon – Collio, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

2010 Sugarloaf Ridge Sauvignon Blanc – Hobart, Tasmania

As we wing our way from Melbourne to Singapore the wine list on SQ228 has me corned into a sauvignon blanc… a Tinpot 2008 from Marlborough purported to be “atypical as the grapes are predominantly from Blind River in the Awatere Valley which is drier and less fertile than the main valley floor. The result is a lively wine with strong lemony character, bracing acidity, pronounced minerality and overall freshness”.

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Must-Have Wines of the Lunar Year 2010 (A retrospective of standouts in the year of the tiger)

Best Discovery of the Year – Markowitsch Reserve Pinot Noir 2004

If there is any sort of ascendency to my passion for wine, I would say discovery is the pinnacle. This goes hand in hand with the question constantly asked of me, “What is your favourite wine?” To which my standard reply is, “The wine I have not tried yet”.

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Must-Have Wines of the Lunar Year 2010 – New Zealand Red Wine of the Year

Vidal Estate Syrah 2007 – Hawkes Bay, New Zealand www.vidal.co.nz

Also Shortlisted for Most Consistent Best Value Wine of the Year

My first encounter with Vidal Syrah was the 2004 vintage, served at a wine fair last year in Singapore. The importer had it in a decanter, which no one seemed interested in. I tried it without asking what it was and was immediately blown away by the wonderfully feral bouquet that was nothing short of good Cote Rotie, the palate equally impressive and wonderfully complex with all the alluring secondary nuances one would expect of a top Northern Rhone.

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Antipodean Chablis

Are you a Chablis drinker? A chardonnay purist who relishes the ethereal clarity of Chablis; a wine infused with flinty minerality and a saline quality that speaks so loudly of the soils it hails from it’s unmistakable. Then there’s the slippery, silky texture, largely unadulterated by oak, it’s glassy, lubricous, tantalizingly tangy palate invigorated by exhilarating steely acidity, a wine bursting with energy and freshness.

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USA – Red Wine of the Year

Amongst the plethora of wineries on this planet and ever-increasing choice, or perhaps bewilderment for the consumer, there is a select group of iconic brands and individual winemakers that stand head and shoulders above the rest. They are the benchmark for all other producers and greatly respected by fellow winemakers and equally revered by wine enthusiasts.

In the old world and spiritual home of pinot noir, such names as Domaine de le Romanee Conti and Armand Rousseau in Burgundy are holy. In the new world sanctification goes to Calera Wine Co in California, USA and its legendary proprietor, Josh Jensen, a true pioneer of the Californian wine industry and master of the most precarious of all grapes.

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