wine korea

Diner Like

2009-12-17T17:03:00.003+09:00

It is something of a luxury having a local, reliable restaurant that offers quick and consistently good dishes at a reasonable price. I am very lucky to have such a luxury.

Now, this is a very British place and I make no apologies for liking this. The dominance of America is evident in Korea and the odd spattering of a British influence makes a welcome change; Gavins sausages, London Pride and British clothes designers(Paul Smith, John Smedley, Aquascutum et al) being notable pleasures.

Diner Like sits at the top of Samneung Park, home to 3 tombs of Joeson royalty next to Seollung Station. The park is well worth a visit.

Dead kings are all very well and good but food and drink are of far more importance and Diner Like is the restaurant you want at the end of your street.

I am not going to go into too much detail as every time I eat there I wax lyrical at the SO and bore the shit out of myself. What they do right is have a space that is modern and open, they have incredibly efficient and pleasant staff and they have a menu that you want to order from.

And when you do order the food is invariably good. We are not talking fancy here, the place is called Diner Like not Michelin Starred Like, but we are talking food you want to eat. Food that you could possibly make at home but probably can't be arsed and costing exactly as much as you would be happy to pay.

You can browse the menu yourself, I have yet to be disappointed. Their burger is the best I have had in Korea, the homemade buns being spot on and the burger exactly the right thickness, not too thin like a McDonalds, not so thick as to be vulgar.
Pasta is good, risotto is good, curry is good, they make their own sausages and they have Yorkshire Pudding on the menu. Yorkshire Pudding!!!!!!!!!!!

The wine list is short and acceptable. They occasionally sell Erdinger for 5000won for half a litre. The sangria is fantastic and they sell Belgian Cherry Beer.

It really is a fantastic, locals restaurant with a consistency in quality many more notable places would be envious of.

I like it. Go there. If you don't like it, you're an idiot.

Champagne

2009-12-13T11:25:00.004+09:00

A Francis Bacon portrait of Muriel Belcher up there. Muriel Belcher was the owner of the Colony Rooms in Soho and in the fantastic Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell stated "Come on cunty, you're not drinking enough champagne!". And she is right. I am not.

Christmas is coming and so buying champagne is probably a decent idea.

Homeplus have the Tesco NV Premeir Cru Champagne for 44,000. A good price for a wine that has, in the past, won accolades above and beyond its price point.
They also have a Tesco Vintage Champagne for 61,000. Somewhat shockingly I took no notice of what the vintage was but in my defence I was being hounded by a rather rude member of staff.

Also, Lotte Department stores are doing Piper Heidsieck for 48,000. A decent price for a decent champagne.

Port is proving frustrating to hunt down. Bog standard ruby port is easy to come by at an OK price but a proper aged tawny port is somewhat elusive. Looks like it will be an expensive one.

Chablis Premier Cru for 55ish at Les Vins Maeils is not bad, though I am hoping for a richer style of white Burgundy for Christmas.

Half bottles of Sauternes are as tricky to find as a dvd copy of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell which everybody really should see. Link here for a short clip as facebook won't let me embed the video here.

Return of the Prodigal Blogger

2009-11-22T17:13:00.004+09:00

No promises.......

However, I should be updating again soon with news of Christmas drinking.
Absence has been due somewhat to work but largely due to a complete and utter disillusionment with wine in Korea. No excitement or bargains were forthcoming and going into wine shops just led to a feeling of 'seen it all before'.

This feeling has not really changed but Christmas demands cheer and cheer requires alcohol and one cannot toast the birth of baby jesus with Prime Max and London Pride alone.

On the radar is Champagne, Sauternes, Port, a big bastard red, something old world and civilised and a depressingly over priced white Burgundy. Also there is talk of making mulled wine, something which I like the idea of more than I like the reality of.

Possible changes on the blog in the new year with a move away from just wine to more of a Seoul luxury guide. Please bear in mind that I consider a fried egg on toast one of life's greatest luxuries.

Merry November, get your livers in training.

London Pride

2009-07-11T12:48:00.002+09:00

London Pride.
E-mart for 3500원 a bottle.
The full Fullers range is coming in the near future.
More info here.

I may get back into posting soon with the end of the semester looming. Keep drinking. It is good for you.

Apologies.

2009-05-08T14:11:00.003+09:00

Apologies.

It has been too long. I have been somewhat busy and I have neglected both wine and writing.

There is very little to update with.....

I had a rubbish 05 claret that I was expecting to be excellent.
Emart seem to have reduced the price of Moet to a permanently tempting 59,000.
Homeplus have a fairly wide range of cheap wines that need further investigating.

This weekend, starting yesterday, is the Seoul wine expo at Coex. For 20,000 won you will get the chance to taste wines from all over the world. The exhibitors will be happy to educate you about their product. This will involve them giving you free wine. It is a no brainer, if you like wine go. Website here .

Upcoming is a review of outdoor drinking opportunities in celebration of the weather.
Also expect more white wine reviews as I have a thirst on.

Apologies to everyone who I have ignored over the last few months. I am going to catch up with emails and comments in due course........

Until next time.

Pierre Gagnaire

2009-02-17T10:28:00.004+09:00

The Pierre Gagnaire review is in the Herald today. The above is the view from our table.

Below is the review in full. It really was a very good lunch. All the touches that you would expect when paying prices such as these were in place. Some of the food was exquisite. All of the food was very good. Just the cinnamon was an issue and in the chefs defence we were asked at the very beginning of the meal if we had any allergies or dislikes. If you have a celebration then now you have a destination.

In addition to all the food mentioned was a final course that could be described as petit fours. Some of these were the traditional biscuity, chocolatey things you might expect. The final was a shot glass of sweet, aromatic, palate cleansing liquid and was just another indication of the cleverness of the kitchen.

Pierre Gagnaire

The opening of Pierre Gagnaire’s restaurant at the top of the Lotte Hotel caused something of a stir in the English press here in Korea. The promise of 3 Michelin star quality food in Seoul was unsurprisingly garnering some excitement, not least from myself. Then there was silence. No reviews, no sign of menus, just the knowledge that the restaurant was there and promising so much pleasure for so much money. As I have previously stated I believe the best way to cope with the growing economic crisis is to indulge in luxury and so I took it upon myself to be the first to offer an English language review and so, as a one off, will only deal scantly with wine today.
Luxury is all about the details. With anything on which you are spending a large proportion of your hard earned cash you expect certain levels of service and satisfaction that generally come down to the details. Stepping out of the express elevator at the 35th floor of Lotte Hotel we were greeted by name into the reception. This is a very good start.
First impressions are also very important and unfortunately, with regards to décor, these were not great. Led through a dimly lit corridor with rooms hidden off to the side, the main dining area is gaudy, gold clad and feels dated in its opulence. However, our table right by the window, looking over the city and mountains quickly dispels any worries about the interior. Eyes will be on the food and the view only.
Immediately on being seated a Champagne cart is wheeled to the table with the Champagne flutes hanging like mini-chandeliers. Having been stung by Champagne prices at the start of a meal in the past and spying Dom Perignon as one of the options I should have politely declined. Instead I asked for the house (read “cheapest”) Champagne and got a crisp refreshing Don Ruinart Blanc de Blanc. Very pleasant but at 55,000 won I should have politely declined.
The two menus offered are not for the faint of heart either. The A La Carte menu is terrifying in its pricing with starters starting at a startling 100,000 won. You can peruse the menu at http://www.pierregagnaire.co.kr/pierre_en/menu_en.pdf. There is however the far more reasonable set lunch offering at 120,000 won. Admittedly, not a cheap lunch, but if you are the sort of person who puts a lot of importance on pleasures of the senses then not a disgrace. You are not just paying for a lunch to fill the belly, you are paying for an experience.
Is the experience up to scratch? Very much so. There is no room to detail everything presented so we will just deal with the highlights. First up are a selection of finger bites, small mouthfuls such as parmesan and chocolate composition and goat’s cheese in a crisp sweet shell. They were all very good and interesting. Then comes the amuse bouche, mouth amusement. I am accustomed to this being a single, small bite that is usually packed with flavour. Here we were presented with five fairly large dishes such as a palate cleansing, yuzu citrus celeriac with a soju foam, a fantastic chicken mousse with crispy chicken skin and something described as mang gae with cumin butter and hot fennel jelly which was strange and amazing. Despite the size and number these were all done with a lightness of touch that left you excited for the rest of the meal.
The only low point for me was the starter proper, cod and squid with a pumpkin veloute. It was perfectly executed but the addition of cinnamon ruined it for me as I only really like it in the company of other spices in a curry.
Main courses gave two choices; sea bass with iberique bacon and a veal salad which was pronounced a great success by my companion and my choice of duck leg with date, ginger, coco and quince accompanied by a French ‘kimchi’ and crispy smoked duck. It was a fantastic dish with savoury and sweet, fat and acid all balancing perfectly with the quince being a real surprise in its delicate sweetness. This is top class cooking.
Dessert comprised three dishes, the stand out being a pineapple, green pepper and ginger ice cream dish with a smear of coriander pesto that worked incredibly and is as good a dessert as I have had. Really inventive, slightly experimental but judged perfectly.
The last sentence could be used to judge the whole experience; it was a beautifully executed meal that managed to balance experimentation with classicism and was a perfectly weighted lunch.
The Marssannay recommended by the sommelier was reasonably priced and matched most of the dishes well, in itself a great challenge. The wine list, to my surprise does include affordable options and despite its favour of French wines offers some real interesting treats.
This was not a cheap lunch but it was a lunch that I consider to be great value. Cooking of this quality is rare in all but the world’s top cities and having a destination restaurant like this is a real bonus for Seoul. While 100 dollar starters can survive the economic down turn then there is a gem at the top of Lotte Hotel.

Les Vin Maeil

2009-02-15T14:23:00.003+09:00

Back in the day, pre-Gangnam, I spoke a lot about Les Vin Maeil. Jamsil was the nearest, most accessible area of Seoul and so this was the shop that took most of my money. I splashed the cash about elsewhere admittedly, but this was the shop that I had most affection for. Then we moved and there were nearer, sometimes cheaper shops that caught my attention and I neglected my first discovery. This was a mistake.

Les Vin Maeil is excellent. In terms of bringing new wine into the country they seem to be a cut above the competitors. It was the first place I saw sherry here and now they have a sherry range. Fino, Manzanilla, Oloroso, and Pedro Ximenez. Given how underrated sherry is in the rest of the world that they are pushing them in Korea is excellent. I picked up a Manzanilla for 20,000 and will give it a write up in the coming week.

The range of white wines they have is also a cut above the competition. They had the Goats Do Roam red and I expressed, on here, a wish for them to bring in the white too. Well, my wish was granted and it is on sale for 24,000 won.

You may hate the name, Goats Do Roam being a pun on Cote Du Rhone, but the wines are excellent. I have talked about the red before, a blend of Rhone varietals, and the white is a similar story with it being based on the great white of the Rhone, Condrieu. This means it is primarily a Viognier based wine and it is an excellent example. Wonderfully aromatic, your nose is treated to a heady peach and apricot salad that follows through to the palate with acidity that gives a suggestion of red grapefruit. It is beautifully balanced, has excellent length and is a wine I will be buying much more of. This is one I really do think you should be hunting down. Now. Go on. Go and buy one. You will like it. It is good.

Also, they have a wine from the same producer called the Goatfather. It is a blend of Italian varietals. I have a bottle. When I drink it I will write it.

South Africa seems to be doing the business for me at the minute!

The Pierre Gagnaire review is coming. It is written. I am waiting on the Herald.

Cheers.

Whisky Whiskey

2009-02-07T10:48:00.004+09:00

WSET, the body with whom I am undertaking my studies, take their letters from Wine, Spirit, Education and Trust. Wine, Education and Trust I think I am doing alright with here. You feel educated and trust each and every post I assume? Spirit? Not so good. I post each review in good spirit(don't trust me) but actual spirits....and education....nah. Spirits tend to be the short refreshing drink I have when my gut is full of beer at 2 in the morning. It happens.

However, a vertical tasting of scotch over Christmas has created a spark, a burning ember of interest that will only be extinguished by throwing lots of money and hangovers at it.

My expertise is fledgling. I know how to taste but I am not sure what I am tasting. I know what I like(and I like what I bloody well know) but I don't know why I like it.

Anyway. I have 2 bottles here now. A 15 year old Glenfiddich and the above Johnny Walker Black Label. The former is a single malt with 15(the clue is in the name) years of age and the latter is a blend with 12 years of age. They are both good. I read good things about the black label, comments such as 'My desert island whisky' and 'The blenders blend'. I knew Johnny Walker was widely available here and so figured it would be reasonably priced. I was right, 38,000 won at EMart. It is smokey, a little peaty and moreish.
The Gelnfiddich is a smoother, richer affair with it's time in barrel lending a chocolate creaminess with a hint of sherry nuttiness. I like it better and it is more expensive. Who'd have thunk it?

My good friend prefers the Black Label which just goes to show other people are not as bright as me.

I need to drink more. I need more blends and I need more single malts. I am a blank book. Influence me.

Having drunk 2 too many beers and doing a whisky tasting last night my next recommendation has to be Solpadeine plus. The drinkers friend available nowhere in Korea.

Public Service Announcement

2009-02-05T19:02:00.003+09:00

Just a quick one to let all you romantic fools know that Emart are running a sale on all sparkling wine for Valentines. So, Moet about 53,000 won, Pol Roger about 88,000 won and Pol Roger 1999 about 100,000 won.

All the new world and cheapy sparklys are on sale as well if you are that way inclined.

Enjoy.

Edit: Let's not talk about my spelling.

Pazzo Barrantes Albarino 2005

2009-02-03T16:01:00.001+09:00

Pazzo Barrantes Albarino 2005
Around 30,000won Cep D'Or Gangnam

It has been a while since I pulled out a wine review for wine in Korea.
However, this is something of note as it is a grape variety that I have not seen here before and for that is exciting. Yeah, exciting.

Albarino(Albarinho? Not sure about the h.) is a, largely, Spanish white varietal that has stirred up some interest in the UK. It tends to be expensive, however, and so is not likely to be worrying the top sellers any time soon.

It can be a really aromatic, peachy wine with the ability to age making it more interesting than a bottle of cheap Sauvignon Blanc no? No?

This is an almost golden coloured wine and was darker than I was expecting for sure. The nose was very mute with a slight honeyed orange peel quality to it. So what it lacked in intensity it made up for in being appealing.
It is a refreshing and light glass with some good, crisp citrus fruit combining with a soft mouth feel. This makes it very easy to drink with the acidity and softness making it a bit of a quaffer. It developed more body in the glass with temperature and this saw the apperance of some more plumy/pear characteristics. This is a nice wine and definitely a nice change from the ubiquity of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

I would say hunt it down but when I went back to get another bottle they had sold out. I'll update if it comes back.

Exciting see!

In my defence, blogger is blocked at work and so I am messing with publishing from google docs and thereforeI have got a bit bogged down in the geeky side of things rather than the winey side of things. The editing options in google docs appear to be cack. Still, it seems to be working so now I can work on being exciting.

The Gagnaire review is coming. Spoiler...........it was good.

Free Grange

2009-01-18T17:15:00.007+09:00

December was a story of me surviving having surgery on my neck in the very good Asan hospital near Jamsil and then surviving Christmas back in England at the very good hotel known as my parent's house.
Surgery was a great success and for the time being all the worst possibilities that were possible are looking less like possibilities. Which is quite possibly good news.
Apologies to any commenter's ignored. I will be catching up on things soon.

Christmas too was a great success. I laid down a lot and pushed things into my face a lot.

I ate at the Michelin starred JSW in Petersfield, Hampshire and for the second time in two years had a really brilliant tasting menu there. Scallops with cauliflower, seabass and tapenade, goats cheese and onion tarte tatin, a ridiculous mushroom risotto, slow cooked lamb and pork belly that defied belief so melt in the mouth was it. Two sweets as well. Really very, very good and again the one type of cooking that doesn't exist here that I do miss for the occasional treat.

My mother's cooking was up to the usual standards with some superb lamb, an ace Spanish tortilla and her trifle all being highlights.

Let's call the above my self indulgent diary post eh?

Booze.

I drank well.

I won't go over it in detail as it has very little to do with Korea and given that my recent posts have been food related the whole wine korea title might start to look a little tenuous.

Dom Perignon 1990
Gorgeous. Straw coloured with a still fairly persistent fine mousse. This is a refined but powerful Champagne with a lovely honeyed quality. Cream soda was a factor with a long, long ripe apple finish. No edges, no meat(eh dad?) and a drink to remember.

Pol Roger 1990
This as a comparison to the above. Much darker and with a more persistent mousse. Really spicy nose on this one with a little apple. Was more like sticking your nose in a pestle and mortar than a glass of wine. It was a really interesting Champagne unlike anything I have had before. Fresh ground black pepper was the predominant flavour. I liked it a lot but it was not in the same league as the DP.

2 Bottles of Puligny Montrachet from different negociants and of different vintages which I can't remember.
The younger was tasting, er, younger. Both were excellent with great fruit and oak balancing going on. Yes, I should have taken notes.

Whiskey tasting. Glenfiddich 12, 15 and 18 year and an Islay that was 20 years I think.
Whiskey goes right to my head. The Islay was, as you would expect, peaty with a real iodine quality. Was not as smooth as I expected. There was a definite progression in drinkability through the three ages of the Glenfiddich. Again, must make more notes.

Grange 1996
Gorgeous. Fairly consistent garnet colour with very little fading at the rim.
Has a big old nose of the expected dark fruits with nice spicy complexity of bay leaf, violets and tea. It is a wine you know is going to taste nice.
It does. Full bodied and opulent it is fantastically structured with ripe fruit of blueberry/bilberry and plum combining with spice, vanilla and chocolate to veil the still very present tannins. It is a wine with a finish that just keeps giving. Will age for some time yet and will no doubt improve. The highlight of my drinking last year I think.

Korea 2009

I am back and I am busy. After the stress of last year however, I am now really starting to enjoy the new 'hood. Did a circuit of the local wine shops yesterday and picked up some good 'uns I think. We have some Portuguese wine which I have not seen here before we have an Albarino(!) which was very exciting to see. I have spotted Cloudy Bay for 44,000won for those who are so inclined(Wine House). I picked up another bottle of Sherry in order to continue training my palate to actually like it. erm... Goats do Roam has shown up in another shop and I think it is time to start pressing the importers to bring some more of the South African wines in.
What else?
All the pubs near my gaff are useless.
I might be going to Pierre Gagnaire for my birthday.
I am considering starting a second, no doubt equally ignored blog, on how to do luxury in Seoul. Where to buy all the things I can't afford, where to sleep in all the places I can't afford and where to do all the things I can't afford. Winning idea eh? You can think of me with my nose pushed against windows, in the cold, excluded from where the luxury lies.

Albarino and Portugese wine reports to come. Hopefuly something on Gagnaire to come.

Dalk Galbi Pie

2008-11-30T19:52:00.002+09:00

I am not turning into a food blog.

But....above is my previously promised Dalk Galbi pie.

If you have ever had a balti pie at a football match you will know what this is about. Curry is great. Pie is great. Curry pie is great! Same premise. Dalk Galbi is great. Pie is great.....you get the picture.

I used a Delia recipe for shortcrust pastry which turned out amazing.
I used the my korean kitchen dalk galbi recipe toned down a bit in terms of spice and without the ddeock. Not because I am some kind of Southern Shandy drinking Nancy....... but because I reckon you don't want a pie to be so hot you can't taste the pastry and chewing rice cake and pastry seemed like it might be a bit odd.

I am no food photographer......

We served it with sesame cabbage and carrots glazed with ginger, honey and soy.

It was great. Worked exactly like I hoped with sweet, spicy, meat and potato and pastry.

Ace.

Not WIne Related

2008-11-25T20:07:00.005+09:00

Please excuse me.

This is not wine related, just a post basking in the glory of my genius in the kitchen. Or just my genius perhaps.

The Korean pears are on good form at the minute and the ones that are getting passed around at work got me wondering as to why I don't eat more of them. Buying a few I realised that the whole peeling thing might be the problem, I'm lazy like that, and so what could I do with them that would make me think it was worth the effort.

Christmas is coming. Christmas means booze and chocolate and given that I am too poor to buy booze and too much of an alcoholic to waste good alcohol on fruit it seemed the perfect 'pearing' was with chocolate.

Short story shorter, I melted some good quality chocolate, dipped the pears in it and let them set. Superb. Dark chocolate with the nutty sweetness of the pear goes incredibly well and as only half the pear is covered the second half cleanses the palate ready for the next one. Genius.

The Lackey, Shiraz

2008-11-23T19:50:00.004+09:00

The Lackey South Australian Shiraz
Hyundai Department Store,
30,000 won.

Just a quick one to try and prove to the world and, more importantly, myself that I am back on this blogging malarkey.

I am skint. Utterly. Friday is pay day and cannot come quick enough.

What better way to cope with the misery of poverty than to make a beef casserole, with real life dumplings(not mandu), and drink a big, spicy, new world Shiraz. So I did.

The beef was meant to be a goulash but we failed in finding paprika and sour cream and so we adapted and just made a bog standard beef and mushroom casserole. Little bit of smoked paprika, bit of oyster sauce, bit of this, bit of that. Pretty good, deep flavoured stew. I am not an expert on dumplings. I don't think I have eaten many in my life. Are they meant to be light and fluffy or something you could assault a policeman with in a riot? Mine were the latter but alright in a vulgar way.

Anyway, the wine. Fairly typical of an Australian Shiraz in this price range. Big nose of ripe, dark fruit and a palate that is juicy, spicy with really nice tannin. It comes in at 15% alcohol so I am a bit bleary eyed writing this. It is a nice wine that is just a little over the top for my tastes and starting to fall into cough medicine territory. A touch over priced but then what isn't round here? Keep an eye out for it in the sales.......

We also picked up a Chilean Gewurztraminer for 18,000 won. Torres, the huge Spanish producer is behind this wine and it's OK. Lacks the really exotic nose of a great Gewurz. This may have been suffering from reduction. I am not sure. It had a distinct rubber tyre smell that passed with time in the glass. It had nice acidity for a Gewurz and was kicking it in a juicy, exotic grapefruit styleee. That was me being a down with the kids wine writer.

Like I said, the Shiraz had a bit of a kick.

I am planning to make a Dalk Galbi pie this week. This is the pie that will eventually make me a rich man. I plan to pair it with beer.

New Herald and a few Cheapys

2008-11-20T18:14:00.004+09:00

The new Herald article is on us today and deals with screwcaps. This was a genuine restaurant critique I read and the fella walked out without eating because of the horror of being sold a screwcap wine. Now, the wine could have been very poor and getting crap wine is no fun when you are spending 40,000 won but the horror he felt at the screwcap was palpable. Today a non-wine drinking friend texted me having read the Herald saying that my standards were dropping and I would soon be defending box wine. This is the battle the producers have to undertake with consumers with regards to closure choice it seems.

There are a few reasonable cheapy cheapy wines about at the moment. Homeplus have two Spanish wines at around the 9000 won range, both from the same bodega, both from the Tesco Finest range, both from Old Vines and one a Garnacha one a Tempranillo. They are good but not great, the Garnacha offering a little more depth but the Tempranillo being a cherry filled fruit glass. Worth a punt.

E-Mart are selling the Argento Cabernet Sauvignon at 9000 won as well. This is a decent bottle of wine. Nothing exciting but no complaints. They are also selling some 3000 bottles of wine that I haven't got the nerve to try. If anyone is willing to go at it for me and let me know I will be in your debt.

I must apologise for the lack of posts recently. I have been somewhat debilitated by blogger being blocked at work, a somewhat uncomfortable set-up at home, a genuine and psychologically scarring lack of money and an upcoming operation that makes me want to drink but makes me think I shouldn't.

Christmas is coming and I should be drinking well soon. With the New Year comes new ideas and my big idea is going to be increasing the quantity and quality of my drinking.

Cheers.

2009 Tasting

2008-11-09T15:33:00.002+09:00

I am not very good at this blogging malarkey......

Yesterday I had the very good fortune to get an invite to a tasting at the WSET office in Seoul. WSET are the organisation for wine education with courses from the very beginner to the not inconsiderable step before Master of Wine.

Podo Plaza is a wonderful place for the wine lover. Wine bar, wine shop, wine education and indeed a cooking school are all ensconced in this wood bedecked building in Apgujeong.

On Saturday they had a tasting of wines for 2009 with a selection of the importers best new wines for the coming year. With 60 wines to taste it was something of an assault on the mouth especially considering the white to red ratio of 5 to 60. There was some good stuff and there was some bad stuff. Prices of the wines were, as ever, something of a kick in the stomach and the selection of wines on offer was, as ever, very traditional and lacking in risk taking.

It was, however, a wonderful chance for me to see the wine lovers of Korea together and I met some really fantastic oenophiles. Women really are going to push the industry forward in Korea going on the male/female ratio there. Perhaps, hopefully, this will see something of a move away from the very traditional Bordeaux/Italy age worthy reds so predominant here to more interesting lighter experimental wines. Or perhaps I will need to fly that particular flag. It was a very worthwhile experience for me and I urge everyone reading to hunt down Podo Plaza and investigate what it has to offer.

We have lamb in the oven for our Sunday dinner and so I will match this to a 2005 Bordeaux bought due to Jancis' glowing review of the vintage. I am sure it will be too young but these things need investigating eh?

Got budget Premier Crus Chablis, a cheapy Pinot and the aforementioned Claret to write up. I will be diligent.

Pierre Gagnaire Seoul

2008-10-03T08:50:00.002+09:00

Well, this seems to have passed through my filters(Google Alerts) until today. Pierre Gagnaire who holds 3 Michelin Stars at his flagship restaurant in Paris has opened a restaurant in Lotte Hotel here.

There isn't too much information out there just yet, specifically, no sample menu, but the prices are out and are, as you might expect, on the high side. However, if the food is up to scratch and sniffing at the door of Michelin quality then the prices are immaterial. Quality and luxury in every sector is a pricey business and the same is true of food and drink.

Some of my greatest eating experiences have been hugely expensive,thanks Mam and Dad, but have been worth every penny. If this restaurant is serving consistently excellent food then as a very occasional treat why not? I will be sure to check it out as soon as my bank balance has stopped reeling.

In The City

2008-09-27T12:17:00.003+09:00

There's a thousand faces all shining bright.

It has been a long time. Wine in Korea has been through some changes. I have moved in from the sticks and am now firmly entrenched in the middle of consumerist Gangnam. What with finding a new flat, paying for a new flat and furnishing a new flat and the stress of starting a new job there has been very little time for blogging and very little money for wine.

However, the dust has settled, the bank balance has levelled and the current financial climate makes alcohol an absolute necessity.

So, updates will be coming..........

For those of you really feeling the pinch I have news of a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc at Homeplus that is retailing for a scandalous 5000 won. Expectations were low but it honestly is very drinkable. Simple, refreshingly acidic with enough citrus and grapefruit to make it interesting, this is not bad value at all. If you don't expect to be wowed and are happy with a simple refreshing quaffer that won't tickle your gag reflex give it a try. There is a red from the same producer at a similar price that has to be worth investigating.
The good news is that the new job, new flat and a coming birthday means I have the prefect excuse to indulge in some serious Champagne drinking. Financial crisis my arse.

How To Beat The Rainy Day Blues

2008-07-20T15:39:00.005+09:00

Up here in the north of South Korea we don't seem to get the full effect of the monsoons that annually hit the peninsula. What we get are the side effects which manifest themselves in rain. Lots of rain. This weekend has been something of a wash out in that it has rained pretty much consistently for 48 hours. The local river has burst its banks, the local building site is a swamp and plans to go flat(apartment) hunting in Gangnam have been quashed.
I have read books on wine.
I have played GTAIV.
I have studied Korean.
I have cooked a Vindaloo.
And I have opened a £40 bottle of white Burgundy. If you can't leave the house to buy something cheap one must drink what is at hand, no?

I bought this bottle as I was leaving my pre-Korea job to take advantage of a staff discount. I am a big fan of white Burgundy, be it the austere Chablis or the rich Mersault, and this particular appellation sounded like it would make a wine that worked my weak spots. I could have kept it for longer, let it age and mature and round out, but as a consumer who can only afford to buy single bottles, not cases, and lacking the luxury of space to store I am a drinker not a keeper.

And it was raining.

And grey.

Really, one needs a pick-me-up on days like this.

Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru, 2000.
Domaine Marc Colin et ses Fils,
France,
Bought for about £40. Unavailable in Korea. Probably. Maybe but it will be stupid, stupid money. The last Corton Charlemagne I saw here was selling for 1,000,000 won or £500.

I have talked before about expectation and wine. The belief that a bottle is going to knock you sideways and re-define your high water mark. A bottle that all other bottles will aspire to be. Well, this bottle neither disappointed nor set a new standard. It was not sublime, earth moving or life changing but it was exceptional, thought provoking and most importantly delicious. It was a very happy monsoon day drink.

For an eight year old drink it wasn't nearly as dark in the glass as I would have expected. It was a beautifully bright lemon with some evidence of legs. Looking youthful!

I don't know if I have got across how important it is to smell a wine. Not just for the purpose of checking if it has any faults or not but simply in terms of pleasure. Sticking your snout in a good glass of wine and taking a good old sniff is surely one of life's great pleasures. Smell is a route to memory and building memories based on great alcohol is surely more worthwhile than building a loss of memory on poor alcohol. Which I also occasionally enjoy indulging in.

This wine had a fantastic nose. My tasting note talks of pears smothered with hazelnut ice cream, sans botulism, with wet stones next to the river on a summer day. It had a beautifully evolved chardonnay nose with no off notes and superb vanilla integration which gave a creamy, buttery quality. There were apples, but not your green apples freshly bitten but apples in a Paris patisserie baking a Tarte Tatin. Yes, this could be my wankiest tasting note yet.

Smell is important then, but how did it taste? Not quite as good as the nose I am afraid. It was still fantastic though! It initially comes across with a real burst of flavour with fresh lemon and good acidity. The apples are there again but this time we are talking a Granny Smith with the nuttiness of the first bite into the skin. On top of this it felt reasonably full bodied with a real creamy mouth feel. The length was exceptional and developed a real nuttiness as evidenced on the nose.

Temperature really affected this wine and it certainly does not want to be served clap cold. Chilled for sure but too cold and it closes up.

It is a wine that seems to walk a tight rope between the austere style of a Chablis and the richness of a Mersault. It was fantastically refined and really was an absolute pleasure. Would that I could afford to drink more Grand Crus white Burgundy! It had plenty of life left in it that is for sure and I perhaps drank a little premature. I am not so upset.

Though, saying that, I am now sitting drinking the Las Moras Argentenian Chardonnay and life has less colour.

If I did tags on posts, this would be tagged under 'ponce' mostly.

GS Mart Wine Fridge

2008-07-14T14:49:00.003+09:00

GS Mart has come up with the genius idea of placing a small wine fridge next to the counter. The summer is really hotting up now and sticking chilled white wines beaded with sweat where I am making my purchase is a sure fire sale.
Las Moras Chardonnay at 11,000won is not bad. Lightly oaked Argentinean Chardonnay with some good simple melon fruit. Perhaps a little sweet and certainly not very refined but a good summer drink.

The picture above is a bottle of Maegkoli. My weekend football team had an away game this Sunday which involved getting up at 6:30(!) and a short trip across the Han to an astro-turf pitch. I really wasn't in the mood for playing, early Sunday is not the best time for me, but after one of the hottest 30 minutes of my life and thinking I was going to die I was glad I played. I have now accepted that I am not going to be a professional footballer, I am probably one of the worst players on the pitch.

Anyway, after the 3rd or 4th game the maegkolli came out. I am really starting to like the stuff despite the fact it tastes a bit like paint. It has a little bit of fizz to it and actually manages to be quite refreshing. I suspect you need to know which bottles to buy as the only time I have bought it with no Korean help it was swinging. Lumpy, no fizz and really tasted like paint. Koreans don't like to drink without food and so we were given a really delicious plum as anju. Then some kind of boiled pea that was sort of nutty with a potato texture. Good stuff. And...they put on lunch for us all. YukGaeJang. Spicy beef and vegetable soup. You wouldn't get that in an English Sunday Pub league.

Chilean Out in the Summer

2008-07-09T13:17:00.002+09:00

A future writing headlines for the Sun surely awaits?

The new Herald article has literally hit the shelves today.

Whilst I seem to be saying that drinking red wines is OK in the summer, today is HOT and so I think something cooler really is the way to go. Maybe beer. EMart do a reasonable, cheap wheat beer.

In other news I will be moving into Seoul in September with a new job in Gangnam. Looking at apartments at the moment. There is a possibility we will be getting a flat in Apgujeong whereby Galleria would effectively be my corner shop. Take that wallet.

Chilean Out in the Summer.

It is something of a paradox that where those of us in the cooler northern climates associate summer drinking with white wines, those from hotter regions are much more likely to go for the reds. With this in mind this week we have three red wines for your consideration all under 20,000 won at Emart, each a different grape variety and all from Chile.

Chile is a region that can represent great value once you have sorted the wheat from the chaff. It is a particularly strong country for the Korean consumer due to the free-trade agreement between the two countries. Let’s hope that the US agreement and the proposed European talks can see similar impacts on the respective regions wine showings and prices.

Starting with the cheapest we have the Cono Sur Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 from the Central valley region at 12,800won. Cono Sur are a winery that produce very modern single varietal wines that tend to express well the fruit qualities of the grape.

This is a purple glass of wine with a very tight nose. It is showing very little typical Cabernet character with a touch of cherry and blackcurrant and a hint of perfumed violets. It is a very soft fruity wine with a very real Cherry Lips(old English sweet) quality. The cherry/blackcurrant, rose/violet theme has followed through from the nose giving us a really pleasant, simple fruit and light vanilla drink that I have no qualms about recommending at this price.

Moving to the south of the country and from the somewhat experimental Bio-Bio valley region, next up is the Augustus Winemakers Selection Pinot Noir 2007 at 16,900won. Pinot Noir is enjoying some success in this area of Chile thanks to the slightly lower sunshine hours and temperatures. Hot regions produce Pinots that taste like jam.

This, as one would expect, is fairly light in the glass, Pinot is a delicate, thin skinned grape and so you get a pretty cherry coloured drink. The nose is not the most appealing unfortunately with bees wax and wet hay notes combining with a strong cherry brandy hit. It is a nose suggesting of a very alcoholic wine.

Unfortunately this alcoholic heat is following through to the palate and though it has a nice rounded mouth feel with good acidity and smooth tannins the alcohol throws it all out of balance. The fruit is nice and sweet and there is a subtle vanilla oak integration but with the 14% alcohol it ends up tasting a little like a cough sweet. This is by no means a bad wine it is just not to my tastes.

The final wine is the Santa Rita Reserva Merlot 2005 from the Maipo valley region coming in at 17,900 won. In contrast to the Pinot this is a heavily extracted wine with a deep, intense garnet colour. In contrast to the previous two simple, fruity wines there is a lot more complexity here.

It has a prominent pencil shaving and coffee grinds nose backed up by good blackcurrant and plum fruit. Also coming through are green peppers and the presence of some well integrated oak. Once again this smells a little alcoholic but there is enough interest to prevent this from being a problem and it is a very appealing bouquet.

You are certainly getting a mouth full of wine here with an intense blast of sharp black fruit. Plums and blackcurrant are to the fore nicely backed up by a smooth vanilla finish. The finish also has the benefit of being long with good tannic grip making this by far the most serious wine today. The oak is certainly making itself noticed as is the 14% alcohol but it has enough fruit and structure to make this a well balanced wine. It is another triumph from EMart’s new world red range and represents great value.

Teanum Otre Negroamaro 2006

2008-06-29T15:10:00.004+09:00

An Italian wine from EMart. About 20,000 wonish.

We decided to make a pizza earlier in the week. Mozzarella, basil, fresh and sun-dried tomatoes and olives. Very Korean. As I was tasked with doing the shopping I decided to pick up a cheeky bottle to wash it all down. I decided to go the Italian route and this bottle proudly displayed an International Wine Challenge seal of approval and I thought why not?

Negroamaro is not a grape I am familiar with, perhaps as it was a victim of the EU vine pull schemes, and so I went into this with a completely open mind.

This is not a heavily extracted wine, it is not particularly intense in colour, somewhat contradicting its name. The nose didn't really do much for me, it was lightly fruity but had a really unappealing characteristic. The only way I can describe it is as the slightly scruffy kid at school who you always suspected didn't wash as much as he should and so carried around a slightly earthy funk to him. Not really what I want in my wine.

It is an acidic wine, fairly light bodied with soft tannins, again suggesting only limited extraction. It is however, pretty good. There is enough fruit to make the acidity appealing and it is a light, bright glass of red wine. Lots of red fruit with raspberry, not so much the flesh but more the seed that gets stuck in your teeth and a few hours later you manage to extract and chew. Delicious. Also, I got a really unmistakable orange quality, which with the cranberry fruit made it almost like a good Cosmopolitan.

Not bad at all and went well with the pizza.

Tonight, in celebration of the baking temperatures here in Korea we are making a pie. Meat and potato pie with mashed potato and mushy peas. Summer food at its finest? I am going to make up an extra batch of pastry though and fully intend to make a dalk galbi(닭갈비) pie this week. I suspect that this is the idea that is going to make me a millionaire.

A New Food Blog

2008-06-20T15:25:00.002+09:00

Google Alerts threw up this new 'Korean' food blog and I am going to link it mainly because there is black pudding on it. I had black pudding and a fried egg as a starter before the fish and chips mentioned below. You cannot beat a bit of black pudding.

Seems to be a well updated blog so far and worth keeping an eye on.

Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour Me Another.

2008-06-20T14:24:00.003+09:00

Yeah, so I had to go back to England again. For a weekend. Left Seoul on Friday and landed back in Seoul on Tuesday. Pretty exhausting really. And expensive.

It was a good do though, my mates wedding and so lots of old, old friends who could little believe I was living in Korea and even more agog that I considered myself a wine man. Maybe I just never seemed that...classy. heh.

I was the best man and so had to do a speech. I prepared the toast with a presumption that all weddings would have Champagne involved at some point. There was none. So my "May your marriage be like a fine Champagne, sparkling(thanks Korea Tourism Organization), intoxicating and not only long lived but also improving with age" was met with many raised pints of lager and my own whiskey.

All this means wine buying is on the down-low this month. I am out of pocket somewhat. I have brought back with me 3 bottles though. A Grand Cru Corton Charlemagne, a Premier Cru Volnay and a Grand Reserva Rioja. There will be write ups on those because they are going to make me either mouth ecstatic or expectation crushed.

Other notes.....

Economy class wine is shit. Drink beer.
Economy class food is shit. Ask for a sandwich.
Cathay Pacific is shit.
English bitter is fantastic and how did it take me so long to realise? I had a pint of Sharps Doom Bar with Fish Chips and mushy peas and it was all absolutely knock out. And very, very English.

That is all.

Buying Smart At EMart

2008-06-04T10:30:00.002+09:00

Junes Herald article is out today and can be found, for a limited time only, here.

I will post my submitted article below because for the first time I am a bit peeved with the editing. Some of the changes actually altered the point I was making, but hey, I am not the professional so I will bow to their decisions. Of course.

In addition to what I said in the article I really do think the Stump Jump pictured above is a cracking bottle, really juicy fruit and a bit of a steal at 16,000won. It seems I am not alone because Parker has rated it as well. Definitely worth checking out.

The Tierra del Sol is not a great wine and I don't think I got that across well enough due to word limitations. However at 5,000wonish it is not as bad as you might expect. It has fruit and at a party would work. It is not a bottle I would sit and really relish though.

I have plenty more bottles to report on and will be stocking up again this weekend so laziness notwithstanding the blog should be getting a few more bottle reviews in the near future.

Buying Smart at E-mart

Living outside of Seoul seriously limits your choices when it comes to wine buying. Dedicated wine shops tend to charge prices that even I baulk at and whilst the selection at the local convenience stores does show signs of improvement it is still very much a selection that scrapes the bottom of the barrel, be that barrel French or more likely American Oak. Living in one of Seoul’s satellite towns I have faced my struggles in the past, the arduous schlep into the capital or the over priced specialist shops with limited choice. Well, apparently fortune favours the brave and everything comes to those who wait and whilst I may not be the bravest, I have waited and this weekend saw the opening of E-Mart in my backyard.

There is no room to go into the pros and cons of supermarket wine selections here but it is fair to say that E-Mart has improved the choice in my city markedly. Selflessly I have braved the opening weekend hordes and taken home and tasted four wines that range from the poor to the excellent.

Let’s start with the poor. Little Penguin South Eastern Australian Chardonnay is a wine appealing to the masses. At 15,000 won with a modern label adorned with penguins it is quite an appealing bottle to pick up and SE Australian Chardonnay can be an over the top, ripe fruit and vanilla treat every now and then. This wine does indeed have a ripe nose of melon and citrus with an oak influence that has a lot of off notes. To drink it is fairly smooth due in most to the amount of residual sugar which is present no doubt to hide all the faults present in the wine. There is some tropical fruit and if your mission was to get drunk it might do the job but it is very difficult to recommend.

Far superior is the Laroche Viognier 2006 from France, a Vins de Pay D’OC wine at 12,000won which represents superb value. Viognier is a grape which presents problems in terms of getting the ripeness of fruit in balance with the alcohol. No problems here with an extremely fragrant wine with a touch of minerality. There is a real soft fruit quality with apricot to the fore with some flower notes. The palate is juicy but not over the top opulent and has a delicious liquorice finish. Fantastic value.

On to the reds and probably the cheapest wine I have ever bought here. The Tierra del Sol 2006 from Spain is a wine made from Tempranillo, the grape of Rioja and at 4,900 won it had to be tried. It is pretty pale in the glass and has a fairly unripe nose of cranberry and red cherry with vanilla coming through as a bar of fudge. This is a very light bodied red and could definitely be chilled. With red fruit and vanilla it is simple and drinkable. Certainly it is nothing to get excited about but for the price and slightly chilled it is worth a punt.

Finally we have The Stump Jump 2006, a blend of Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre from the McLaren Vale region. At just under 16,000 won this is a cracking buy with a fantastic warm, fruity nose with a touch of spice. It is one of those welcoming wines that you just want to glug down. It has a really rounded mouth feel with soft tannins and good length. There is a touch of tobacco, but this is a fruit story with juicy blueberry and black cherry and is a fantastic glass of wine. Recommended.

Wine Outsells Soju for First Time

2008-06-02T09:16:00.002+09:00

!!!!!! This is pretty big news really. I mean, I realise that wine still has a long way to go here and in terms of volume it won't be even close to soju sales. But still! Wine sales in EMart surpass those of soju for the first time.

Things will only get better for them as well as I drop all my hard earned at our new store. The good news is they have a reasonable selection and I am going to work my way through it which means plenty more reviews. This weeks Herald article will be the first of those.

Salt and Vinegar Crisps

2008-05-31T21:30:00.002+09:00

I don't think I have mentioned this before but you can get your Salt and Vinegar crisps here in the ROK now. Yes, the reasons for going home are diminishing........

Olympic Park, Jamsil there is a shopping area thingamy with a horseshoe shaped area. heh, that's not much use. It is just to the left of the Park itself if you are heading from outside Seoul into Seoul. Anyway, inside the building, if you pass through the horseshoe area there is a market of sorts with two shops selling imported goods. Both of them have Salt and Vinegar crisps.

EMart has opened and I have spent some money. Just tucking into the 12,000won LaRoche Viognier which is actually more aromatic than I remember. Not a bad thing. I have plenty more bottles to report on which should please my three readers no end. Thanks folks!

Back to England in a couple of weeks for a long weekend. Aye, fly out Friday back in Seoul Tuesday. A wreck in the making. On the plus side I might get to bring some booze back as I am travelling light.

This post is brought directly to you from spent too much money and so bored on a Saturday night productions.

Hyundai Department Store Sale

2008-05-30T14:19:00.002+09:00

That right there is the new EMart opening in my town. I never thought I would be so excited by a superstore opening but this is different. They will have a dedicated wine area. In my town! I pity the only current wine shop here, who charge horrific prices and I have never seen anyone else in there and I also pity my bank account. My plan is, if the selection is up to it, to do a big old EMart tasting. Oh, and that artists representation there isn't based on reality. There is no green near by.

In other news, the wine shop in Hyundai at Coex have a great wine sale running until Sunday. They seem to have offers all the time but I saw some really good deals there currently running. You can pick up a La Vielle Ferme Cotes du Ventoux for 10,000, a wine I haven't tried for a few years but if memory serves is a good rustic style red. I will be picking some up myself.

Koreans Pay Among World's Highest Prices, Survey Shows

2008-05-23T14:04:00.004+09:00

Link here.

"because Korean importers seek higher profit margins"

Yep. That about sums it up. Yes, we do pay a high level of tax here for wine but that is not the sole reason for the high prices we have to pay.

Importers will put at least a 15% mark-up on a bottle with supermarkets and hotels having to pay up to a 50% mark-up! With retailers then adding between 8 and 40% to the price it is not hard to see that when it comes to the point where we are handing our notes over we are paying hell of a lot more than the bottle is worth.

I appreciate the imperative to make money, I really do. However for the wine market here to really get going we have to be looking to getting everyday wines at everyday prices.

The Austrade body for promoting Australian wines abroad states quite clearly, "Korean consumers are price sensitive with an interest in things new and different." It is a great combination as you can sell value wines that are different, you can explore less fashionable wines you can push excellent Rieslings, or Austrian wines or any of the other good value wines out there and the consumer will embrace it. By doing this the Korean market can explode. Just one importer putting it on the line and trying to push by volume rather than price could see a huge change in wine consumption here.

Fingers crossed.

May Herald Article

2008-05-23T13:43:00.002+09:00

Mays Herald article can be found here.

I'll cut and paste the original below as well.

I will say, the Expo was pretty good. If nothing else I had a good old drink and left there in pretty high spirits.

Also, it really was nice to go back to Sideway. The prices have gone up a touch but I suspect that isn't really their fault. Prices seem to be rising everywhere. Sitting on the terrace is worth it though I have to say. A really pleasant way to spend an evening.
For the record I had a Pouilly Fume which was a lovely subtle Sauvignon Blanc. Crisp and fresh with a touch of minerality it was very good.

Seoul Wine Expo 2008

As a member of the public, Wine Expos or shows are a great place to go and meet the people behind the wine we drink. Seoul Wine Expo was held over the weekend of the 10^th of June and to all appearances it appeared to be a great success. This was not some small exhibition for connoisseurs and the wine trade to give themselves a smug mutual pat on the back, this was a full on publicity exercise with the objective being the continued growth of the wine industry on the peninsula. The Coex exhibition hall was decked out attractively with all the major players having pretty hefty presences and there was a sense that they were out to win new customers.

The crowd was encouragingly young and there was a noticeable dominance in numbers of women over men. Smartly dressed and clutching wine glasses as they moved from stall to stall it was apparent that they are the future for the wine market here. It is by marketing heavily to young women with disposable income that wine can start making inroads into the beer and soju markets. This means a move away from the big, heavy red wines that have their sights set on the Bordelaise and a move to lighter, fruitier, wines and dare I say it, white wine.

Most of the exporters I met, French, Italian, Australian and Argentinean all said the same thing, that breaking into the Korean market was difficult. With all the red tape and the culturally different business practices I got the impression that the previous few days of the Expo had been somewhat arduous for them. However, all expressed great hope in the growth of the Korean market and it seems that it is certainly no longer an after thought. It is expected that Korea will mature into a market much like Japan.

The heavy presence of Wine Australia, a body dedicated to promoting the virtues of Australian wines was a real indication of how seriously the potential is being taken and it was an Australian wine that for me, was the star of the show. Murray street vineyards is a small, boutique winery based in the Barossa region of Australia. They had a small stall fronted by a very friendly Marketing manager who was really excited to be in Korea. The first wine we tasted was a blend of Viognier and Marsanne and it is exactly the sort of wine that I see the new, wine savvy customers going for. Aromatic, soft and fruity it is a beautifully executed blend. The other wines were all red and based on Shiraz, Barossa valleys classic grape and all were equally successful. Murray Street Wines are apparently available in EMart but unfortunately not my local branch so I cannot advise on price.

Sideway Wine

Sideway wine in Gangnam(www.sidewaybistro.com) is something of an oenophiles oasis. It sits at the top of the hill behind Gangnam station and, unusually for many wine bars here, sits at street level with big windows letting in lots of light. And it is indeed a light, airy space with cream leather sofas and more traditional bar seating. Most important of all it has a terrace for enjoying those summer evenings. Admittedly the view of a wall is not great but the addition of a projector showing off some the world’s great vineyards is eye catching and a good way of brushing up on your wine geography. What makes it so appealing a place as a wine drinker is its small, focused wine list. There are not pages and pages of sub-standard wines to flick through just a good selection of well chosen wines broken down into country and region categories. It means you can order pretty much anything without fear of making a big mistake. The owner, Anthony, is knowledgeable, friendly and happy to help with your choice and, being a French man, is making sure the food offered is up to scratch and will complement whatever you are drinking. With a wine shop of sorts on site if you pick a cracker for your evening you can take one home and enjoy it at your leisure.

Seoul Wine Expo

2008-05-09T14:10:00.002+09:00

It would be remiss of my not to mention the Seoul Wine Expo this weekend. It starts, er, today for the public and will cost 15,000won to get in where you will be given a free(?) glass. Then you can make your way around the stands drinking to your hearts content. Prepare some interesting questions and look a little more presentable than a bumbling alcoholic and my guess is you can get good value for money there.
I am going with the intention of getting some on the spot interviews for the Herald and myself. We will have to wait and see how this goes.
You can get limited information here.

My Google alerts threw up the information that Koreans drank more wine than whiskey for the first time ever last year. My take on this is it is a good sign at both ends of the market. I can see fine wines replacing Whiskeys in many boardrooms but more importantly more average Koreans drinking wine, in their homes and in the bars. I have become a bit obsessed with my weekly recycling seeing how many wine bottles are showing up. They are there and they are not all mine. Honest.

Tell Me About It

2008-05-07T15:32:00.003+09:00

A picture of an Appletini there. Not my hand.

Tell Me About It is in Apgujeong near Dosan Park. Somewhere off Rodeo Dr. Keep walking the streets that run parallel and you will find it.
Normally in Apgujeong we drink in Abbey Road as it has a good garden and the London Underground signs are always good to see. Abbey Road is a nice shambles of a bar. Tell Me About It is like a smart Continental bar. The bar is set up so with all the windows open you can sit at the bar and still be outside. Ace.
It has a sort of decadent railway station bar feel to it. Only better.
The bar staff are handsome, so I am told.
The clientele are beautiful. I include myself in that.
The music is that atypical Jazz house that manages to sit in the background not disturbing anyone.
The drinks were excellent. The wine list is pretty good and pretty expensive. No great shocks on there. A bottle of Champagne can be had for less than 80,000won. Krug was tempting at 240,000won. You should hear how I can try and rationalise a purchase like that. Thankfully I was not that idiotic.
The cocktail list is good and they grow their own herbs for the drinks. The Mojito was as good as I have had. Cosmopolitans received a muted reaction from the SO. The Appletini was a great success. I had a 10,000won bottle of Stella. I can 't really justify that even in my own head. Cocktails are all 15,000won which is pricey but is very easy to justify if you have lived in London. London prices make the rest of the worlds luxuries easy(er) to take.

It is a really nice place to sit and have a drink. Doing a bottle of something cold in on a summer day there would be great. You can watch the Apgujeongites walk by as you take a swig. Much more civilised than Rock and Roll Bar and similar beer prices.

Also, there was a table of three, two men one woman who caned a bottle of Jack Daniels in the time it took us to drink one drink and then proceeded to order another bottle. They looked completely together. Most impressive.

Oh, and if you get the Martini set you get free mashed potato. You really can't argue with that.

Can you?

7 Days Is Too Long

2008-05-07T14:43:00.004+09:00

So a month is a disgrace no?

In my defence we had something of a health scare which, to a degree, is resolved. Also the Dr told me I had to drink less which, to a degree, I have followed. Exercise I am not doing so well with although I did go to play football this Sunday.
Unfortunately we hadn't registered to play in time and so instead the adjoshis(middle aged men) plied us with Makgeoli at 9.30 in the morning. I guess we can call it an exercise in endurance. The Dr also stuck me on a machine that told me I had to lose 2.5kg of fat. I am not entirely sure where I am meant to find it. Although I often invite people to 'kiss my fat arse' I reckon I barely have 0.5kg both buttocks combined. Anyway, I digress.

It is true, I have not had a huge amount of wine recently. I did get sent a Homeplus/Tesco update which had discounted wines however and so went and had a shufty. I am pretty much always disappointed when i look at Tescos range. I feel like they should be doing so much more to push wine and to expand the range of wines available and yet what they offer is generally very uninspiring. The white wine selection is pitiful the reds offer nothing very different to what can be had at EMart and I barely look at the fine wines because the basic wines aren't really enticing me with price.

So what did I get? A Chilean Sauvignon Blanc that came in at a stupid 4,000won. Plonk prices in Korea. Superb. Unfortunately it tasted like plonk too. A bit of Sauvignon Blanc characteristic but slightly oxidised and with far too many off flavours. If you were having a party and wanted to serve wine to get people wasted I guess you could do worse. 4,000won is cheap.

I also got a Hardys Shiraz. Again because it was cheap. I can't remember exactly how much but was less than 10,000. I think maybe 8,000. Maybe less. It is mass produced red wine from Australia. It's Ok. Slightly too sweet, a bit jammy, too much oak but doesn't taste like the ribena and vanilla juice travesty that is Yellow Tail. Serve this at a party and you will get no complaints.

The last wine is the one pictured above. A Tavel Rose produced by M. Chapoutier. This was about 32,000won. heh, I know. I scrape the barrel and then get silly. Seriously, the sun shine leads to some sort of short in my brain every year where I can convince myself I like rose and it is the perfect summer drink.
Chapoutier is one of the Rhones most respected producers and so I felt it was worth a punt on this. It was a pretty salmon pink with a strawberry/cherry nose. It's a dry wine with very little tannin and a simple cherry cranberry flavour. No complaints but not nearly as refreshing as a crisp white wine would be on a summer day. That being said, we took it down to the river outside our apartment and drank it sitting on the grass and it was a very pleasant way to spend Children's day.

Budget Wines

2008-04-08T15:50:00.002+09:00

Hynudai department store in Coex, and I would imagine everywhere else, are having something of a wine super sale. Really good discounts!
Argento and Alamos wines are down to the 6-8000 mark.
I picked up a mediocre Vins de l'Herault for 7,000won.
It is a reasonableish selection and is definitely worth checking out just to stock up on some cheapish week day wines.

They do have some good stuff as well with Chateau Cantermele and Chateau Talbot with some pretty hefty savings.

We ate at Sujis for the first time as well. It's location in Hyundai is not ideal, it's like the Kebab stall in the Cheonho branch, good to see but put it at street level with some natural light and it would be so much better.
Still, fish and chips served with malt vinegar! Superb. Proper chips and a meaty fish with crisp batter. 16,000w and a bargain at the price. Try finding fish and chips that good in England for the same price.

Latest Herald Update

2008-04-03T15:19:00.002+09:00

So the latest Herald article is out and I am behind the times already. On Tuesday I state that there are no new world Gewurztraminer to be found in Korea, on Wednesday I find Cassilero del Diablo Gewurz for 20,000 won. I haven't tried it yet and although Cassilero aren't the worlds greatest wine maker they do make some pretty solid wines. So heres hoping. We do get Cono Sur wines here and they make a brilliant Gewurz so here is hoping some more.......

Also, my Google Alerts failed to notify of this gem.....

Cheaper wine. There is little better news one can hope for. If the big players here, Tesco and Emart can start cutting out the middle man it can only be good news for the consumer with regards to price. A certain homogeneity of wines might well also come but we hardly have a cornucopia of choice here right now anyway. If we could now get a large independent retailer with a real passion for diversity and value it could be a bright new future for Korean wine drinkers....

Gorilla in the Kitchen

2008-03-18T14:25:00.002+09:00

As mentioned down there ↓ we had brunch in Gorilla in the Kitchen on Saturday. It is a stylish Agpujeong establishment owned by some K-drama celeb. We went there because it was next to Dosan park, and so were we, and you can't argue with the name. There was a depressing lack of Gorilla emblazoned furniture though. It was all very minimalist as you can see in the picture.

This is a healthy eating type of restaurant, all juices and smoothies and calorie counts on the menu. The sort of thing that can put you right off your food. The prices could worry you as well with most dishes starting around 20,000w which might seem a bit steep for a salad. The Japanese tourists and the leggy, short short wearing Agpujeongites aren't too worried though and nor was I. We are like birds of a feather.

You get complimentary bread, which was nice, seedy and some of it still warm. Two types of jam came, apricot and apple with the ubiquitous olive oil and balsamic ponce-fest. Completely pointless as far as I am concerned give me salted butter and I will be happy, I do not want to suck on soggy,vinegary, oily bread. Naff.

We then got a shot of something milk coloured. It was slightly bitty but tasty and felt like it was doing me good so I one shotted it like I never do with Soju. I ordered Eggs Florentine and a seasonal juice, which was strawberry. Strawberries are everywhere here at this time of year. It tasted exactly like strawberries and so was a great success as far as I was concerned.

The eggs did everything they would need to in order to convince you that 20,000w was not a rip off. 2 big poached eggs on top of 2 slices of grilled gammon on top of 2 fat slices of tomatoes on top of a big pile of wilted spinach on top of some seedy, brown bread. This came with a salad and was doused liberally with a mustardy hollondaise sauce. It was huge and I refuse to believe it was actually healthy. I didn't think I liked gammon but this tasted of animal and the grill and so was a winner. The SO had a grilled chicken pasta which was less of a success, tasty but over-peppered.

The brunch came with complimentary desserts of some super sweet espresso banana thing which was pretty good and a brilliant frozen persimmon that was a mushy, sorbet with liberal texture givers of rice cake, pistachio and best of all fig. Superb.

It isn't the cheapest, but then it is never going to be here is it, and I have only seen the brunch menu so cannot comment in great detail but I thought it worked really well. It was modern and bright with outdoor seating and views of the park upstairs. The staff are worth mentioning as well, very friendly and our guy was switching perfectly between Korean, English and Japanese. I bet they don't pay him enough.

Now if they would only work on their Gorilla theme....

Update

2008-03-18T13:57:00.002+09:00

I have been lax.

Not a great deal to report on wine wise. We had the above Chateau de Tertre 2000 vintage a week or so ago. I decided to utilise the decanter but I have no idea how this affected the flavours. It was good though and if you can find decent Chateau's 2000 vintages at a reasonable price I would say snap them up. This was very Margaux. Leathery with great depth of fruit with a really distinctive spice element, cloves were prominent. It went very well with the goulash I made.

Had a trip to Apgujeong this weekend, a very pleasant spring day in Dosan park. I found a Champagne bar! Didn't venture in due to the time. I bet it is expensive though. I'll have a look soon. 2 new wine shops to report on as well. One is on the main road that runs parallel with the Galleria road. If Once in a Blue Moon is on your left keep walking down to the main road and then turn right. Was a pretty grotty shop with some pretty good wines. Cloudy Bay was only 44,000w which is stupid cheap compared to the rest of the shops and would almost be worth buying up to sell on. I didn't get any.

The second shop is part of the 'Podo Plaza', yes grape plaza. In it is housed a wine bar, closed before 6pm, a wine shop and the WSET offices. The wine shop had a little more diversity, including Chinese wines, as you might expect from a WSET affiliated store. I got a Yalumba Riesling, petrol, tropical fruit nose with a lemon peel finish, and a Yalumba Shiraz Viognier that the Wine Spectator have rated. 25,000 and 22,000w respectively. They had some S.African wines that bore my name as well. So that was nice. I can't give directions back to it yet because Agpujeong still feels like a rabbit warren to me but I will be going back and I will update.

I had brunch at Gorilla in the Kitchen which I will talk about up there ^.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-03-09T04:43:00.004+09:00

Ahem.

Good day yesterday. Started with news of Thatcher and dreams of Ding Dong the witch is dead, mean spirited and possibly bad taste yes but we're not keen on her here, then Utd get dumped out of the cup excellent style by Pompey then Wales win the triple crown and England lose to Scotland and then Barnsley go and flipping beat Chelsea in the cup. Chelsea!!!

So semi finals, Wembley and all that with none of the big four there. We could do it you know. Got a stinking hangover here which is to be expected I suppose. I'll need to get another bottle of Champagne if Tarn carry on like this.

Going to make a goulash for the 5th growth I bought in Hong Kong today. A very civilised way to celebrate a completely uncivilised evening.

Cotton Pickin' Pocket Picker

2008-03-03T10:58:00.002+09:00

So, Hong Kong has decided to abolish duty on wine and beer. This could be serious news for the fine wine drinkers out there with Hong Kong and mainland China already being a substantial market for the worlds top wines. It will have little impact on me I am sure, my money doesn't stretch that far. It would be nice to see a similar move here though eh.? With a 15% import tariff a 30% liquour tax and a 10% education(!) tax before we get to VAT and the extremely greedy mark-ups the wine industry is up against it here. Yet it still shows fantastic growth. With a reduction in these costs perhaps we could see a real explosion in wine consumption in Korea. Perhaps someone would like to set up a nationwide wine distribution company with access to all the supermarkets, convenience stores, department stores etc without the sort of price protectionism that I suspect is going on now.

Had a Cono Sur Pinot Noir from Hynudai for 20,000w last week. Fruity and fragrant it wasn't too bad at all. If you like the lighter bodied reds you could do a lot worse.
Also, Sileni Semillon for 28,000w, a bit pricey yes, but a really delicious white that I will give a proper write up soon.

“No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.”

2008-02-26T19:01:00.003+09:00

Yeah, spring is on us..........

I had plans of getting the Vespa out of the second bedroom this week and then we had more snow than we have all winter. I swear to god the birds are nesting though......

Anyway, my illustrious Herald career continues with a highly optimistic spring submission. Read it here.

This weeks drinking has included a Norton Sauvignon Blanc which was pretty boring. Showed all the SB characteristics and was completely uninspiring.
I had a completely unremarkable 2000 Margaux as well. I won't bother telling you the Chateau as I really don't want anyone buying it. Rubbish, rubbish Bordeaux which nicely indicated to me no matter how good the vintage you still need to be choosy.
The Tormenta Viognier mentioned in this weeks article is good but a bit much for me. Really is a punch in the face.
Shindong wines website shows they have a new arrival of Sherry which is exciting. I can't get over the idea of liking the stuff. Also Madeira has suddenly appeared. An almost indestructible wine, you can keep it open pretty much as long as you want, that makes superb gravy. I will be getting a bottle.

Folks with decent cable TV should be getting Alice channel, loads of pretty dull but informative wine programming on an evening.

COEX Inter-Continental Lunch

2008-02-24T17:20:00.007+09:00

Yesterday we had the excitement of going for two Michelin star rated food in Seoul. Previous attempts at fine dining here had seen us having to serve ourselves a starter from a buffet. Carpaccio looks pretty when arranged by a chef, when arranged by a cack-handed, half drunk northerner it looks like a pile of raw meat. That's why we have chefs.

Coex Inter-Continental is a pretty soulless hotel, very much the chain in a big old department store hotel but the lift was fast and the view from the Sky Lounge on the 30th floor was pretty good. River views, mountain views and Seoul traffic views. You can't ask for too much more.

It is a nice dining room set up to take advantage of the views, which seems a no brainer but you would be surprised how many places get it wrong. We have tables set with linen, we have nice crockery and glassware. All good.

Lunch had two menus, one at 65,000w, about £33, and one at 55,000w, roughly £28. The more expensive had the choice of lamb(!) or beef for the meat course with an additional course of saffron risotto. Saffron is pound for pound one of the most expensive foodstuffs around and anyone with half a taste bud knows it is minging. It is one of those flavours that could be so subtle as to be indistinguishable and I would still distinguish it. Hate the stuff. It once ruined a meal in Milan sat at the table next to Benito Carbone. Anyway, because of saffron I opted for the cheaper menu. Unusual for me....

First up was a glass of Piper Heidseck. Now, I should have learned from the £25 glass of Bangkok Moet but when you are out for a good meal it really is difficult not to start with Champagne. Isn't it? This was a reasonable 20,000w(£10) glass and was very yeasty and was to match up with the first two courses.

On to the food. First up was goose liver with scampi. A thin slice of rich, fatty goose liver topped with a langouistine/scampi/Dublin Bay Prawn. Call it what you like, I love em. The plate was topped with three big strawberries. The goose liver was Foie Gras, unethical and delicious, the scampi was everything a tiger prawn isn't and the strawberry worked really well to cut through the richness of it all Though three strawberries were excessive they made my pairing of the Champagne with the first two courses look inspired.

Next up was a Lobster Ravioli, three corn yellow ravioli served up with a nice chunk of pure lobster meat, three tiny cubes of beetroot. a fat oyster and a garish pink sauce/foam. This was pretty subtle and a touch disappointing. The ravioli were good, combining that lobster sweetness with a hint of the sea, the oyster was very good in a should I really be eating this fashion, the beetroot was pointless, give me a decent slice of the beets so I can really taste it, and the sauce really let it down. It was creamy and pink, possibly under-seasoned and dare I say it, possibly microwaved. I very much doubt this but there was evidence of a skin and it did come out very quickly.

The third course was the beef and this consisted of a beef tartare with beef and polenta. The plate is presented with a tower of tartare, ground raw beef topped with a tapenade topped with a tiny, raw quails egg yolk. To its right sat 2 slices of rareish beef and two diamonds of polenta in a rich brown jus/gravy. One polenta was topped with a tiny slice of truffle. I've never had a tartare before, my fair share of raw beef yes(Yukhoe was one of my first Korean dishes and is still one of my favourites), but never the classic tartare. This was good but the tapenade was a pretty strong flavour and masked pretty much everything else. I guess raw beef and raw egg yolk aren't exactly hammering home their flavours but it just seemed a touch over the top. The grilled beef to the right was everything a meat dish should be in a place like this, perfectly seasoned with a jus/gravy that really brings out the meatiness of it all. The polenta I didn't like. Give me potatoes over grain this just tasted a bit healthy for a plate like this. The truffle was earthy.

We drank a Chianti Classico with this and despite being a 2005 and my fears of it being too young it was a very modern cherry rich glass with a smell of the sweaty leather in there. A good match to the cooked beef, the tapenade herbiness messed with it a bit.

Pudding/Dessert was an apricot thingamybob. It is hard to describe fancy puddings. There was a sorbet whose flavour I couldn't distinguish atop a set vanilla cream atop some poached apricots atop a spongey, biscuity fella. Served with a fantastic, I mean really fantastic, black fruit compote and three cubes of apricot jelly stuff. Like I say, it is difficult to describe fancy puddings. It was good though.

All in all it was a pleasure to be eating in that manner in Seoul. Fine dining is not something that seems to be easy to come by here and I will be honest, I miss it. I don't eat like that often for sure but as an occasional treat there are few more pleasurable ways to spend ones time. Tokyo has just been showered with stars in its first Michelin review. I simply cannot see that happening here. You can eat incredibly well in Korea. Incredibly well. However at the top end of things, when we move out of the peasant, homely cooking that is the basis for all cuisines into the subtle, well presented and exciting, there seems to be nowhere to go. This is a shame. There is food here that could be elevated into the sublime at the hands of a truly skilled chef.

Tables that came in after us all went for the most expensive menu and all had lamb. We need to start seeing lamb here!!!

Christ, that was long. Spring feels like it is coming and I have gone white wine crazy. Wednesday is the next Herald article and it is going to be on a white theme I reckon. Sauv Blanc, Viognier, Chardonnay and Semillion. I just need to find a cheap bottle because everything I have bought recently has been over 20,000. A sign of inflation or something else?

Tyke That!

2008-02-17T11:12:00.005+09:00

AHHH! hahahahahaha
ahahhaahaha

hahahaha

Ow.

and.....

Thursday's Herald

2008-02-14T14:02:00.005+09:00

That chap above is the Italian 2 Michelin Star chef Gaetano Trovato. Why is he sitting up there stacking crockery? Because he is coming to Seoul to cook for a couple of weeks. Details here. I am not going to miss the chance of eating Michelin rated food here and so have a table booked for the final Saturday. I believe on the Friday he is doing a menu paired with some pretty tasty looking wines but 150,000w is a bit steep for me this month. The lunch is a more palatable 55,000w. No doubt they will try and rob me of my money with the wine list, it is a fact that us drinkers subsidise non-drinkers in restaurants, but I will not be weak. The price I paid for 2 glasses of Champagne in Bangkok has taught me a valuable lesson.

Today sees the third exciting installment of my Herald articles. It can be read here. I'm not going to bother posting it below, I think the editing went well this time with the exception of the "er" before the "they are convenient". I don't use er.
I'm not sure why it has appeared in Thursday’s edition.

SS Wine of the Month Club, DP 96 and a Port as Old as Me.

2008-02-13T14:35:00.001+09:00

First off I just want to give a nod to the SS Wine of the Month Club, that's SeoulSteves not Waffen. I missed the tasting of these but it looks to me to be the best of the mixed cases that they have had on offer so far and well worth checking out. So check it.

It was my birthday last month and so I decided to crack open the Dom Perignon 1996 that I had bought in Lotte Department Store, Jamsil, last year. I have a compulsion to buy as much Champagne as I can and I do find it very difficult to resist vintages like the 96. I hadn't intended opening this for some time yet but we had a bottle at Christmas that went down very nicely and Jancis was raving about how well it was drinking and it was my birthday after all so what the hell. Right?

So having cleansed my palate of the Paris Baguette cake I had been shoveling into my face we got stuck into the booze.

It is a fairly deep colour with a persistent mousse that is not that fine, certainly nowhere near the bublleage of the Krug. The nose is knockout, intense honeyed green apples with a yeasty, nutty aspect. A real powerhouse bouquet this.
Just like the Krug this is an incredibly fine, elegant glass of wine. It is full bodied and intense with smooth honey balanced by good acidity and with brilliant length. The finish has apples and an almost creamy vanilla bread sweetness. Jancis calls this 'a caress of a wine' and who am I to disagree.
If you see it, buy it.

The second bottle for review here, and probably the last from my Christmas drinking, is the Quarles Harris Port from 1977, just one year my junior.
Good Port is one of life’s great pleasures I reckon. Vintage Port is one of those wines you really do have to sit on for quite some time, they are hugely tannic and acidic in youth and mellow into a smooth and decadent glass of wine.
After a typical struggle with a cork of this age, half of which was dug out with my mams best cutlery, we decanted and poured a glass of ruby with a cherry, brown tinged rim. Still looking fairly youthful then.
The nose was not fantastic, slightly nutty, slightly fruity with some cherry and cranberry and also ever so slightly vegetal.
To drink it was a delight though. Very fresh cherry/strawberry fruit smoothed over with caramel and a long nutty finish. It was also blessed with a floral quality like Charbonnel et Walker Rose and Violets. After 24 hours it had developed a fantastic dried fig aroma and all in was a very good wine.

So, the end of the Christmas write ups. I bought a 5th growth Bordeaux from 2000 in Hong Kong airport last week in the hope that the 2000 vintage was as good as they say and it is drinking now. I'll let you know.

D'Yquem, Expectations and Tasting Equipment

2008-02-11T11:38:00.000+09:00

Chateau d'Yquem, 1988 Sauternes, France Price: No Idea.

He is a nice bloke my old man. We had been in discussions about the Christmas wine and I had spotted a Sauternes at Majestic wine that I thought was going to be pretty spectacular. It seemed the rest of the UK thought so too and so they sold out of the Rieussec before we got chance to pick up a bottle. Not a huge problem, we had plenty of other good bottles to get through and he had picked up some cheaper Sauternes from Marks and Spencers that Jancis had recommended. I was happy enough.
A couple of days after Christmas he is a bit excited and shoots off to another room only to return with two bottles, a Chateau Climens Barsac 1989 and a d'Yquem 1988! Wow! A proper surprise and a really exciting one. The internet reveals Parker points of 90-95 and 99(!) respectively and we start planning when to drink these wonder bottles.

The thing about tasting wine is you need frames of reference. This is why you drink as much as you can and you take notes, they act as an aide memoir and allow you to make comparisons much more easily. The other thing about tasting wine is very often there are many factors that will influence your experience of a bottle. Mood, setting, expectation can all change your experience of a wine. A cheapy Touraine Sauvignon tastes so much better with the sun on your face in a small French town than it does in a flat in Bethnal Green in February.

On opening the d'Yquem I had 2 problems to contend with then, no real frame of reference, I had only ever tasted 2 standard Sauternes before then and expectation, I think I was expecting angels and horns and fruit footed fairies to dance on my tongue. I can confirm now that this did not happen and will so have to wait until I drink a 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild.

So, despite that, how was it? Good!
It was a fairly deep gold, much much deeper than the one year younger Barsac and actually looked a little like Irn Bru. Obviously it clinged to the glass like a new born and really was very pretty. The nose has a real burnt caramel character with obvious honey and apples. It is ever so slightly nutty and had a hint of citrus peel, more orange than lemon. It wasn't very tropical at all and smelled nowhere near as fresh and sprightly as the other, younger Sauternes I had experience with.
This is an incredibly smooth glass of wine, luscious and unctuous it is a real caramel honey drink, I would recommend it if you have a sore throat. Much better than a Locket. I was expecting it to have much more acidity but this could be an example of really well integrated acidity to the extent that I missed it. I have described the length as reasonable, not great but that doesn't seem accurate now, I remember it had a nice pineapple finish and also had a fairly obvious brown apple thing going on. You know, apples that have been cut up and left to oxidise a bit.

My notes are actually really short as I got a bit annoyed with trying to concentrate so much on the flavour I forgot to enjoy the drink. I spent far too long looking into space concentrating on my cheeks. Not a good look. It really did open up and evolve in the glass as well but I just stopped taking notes.

Let's get one thing straight this was an excellent wine and we all really enjoyed it. I suspect it had no chance of living up to my expectation and so the only solution is for me to get another bottle with my expectations lowered suitably. Now all I need to do is raise my bank balance suitably as well.

What's in Your Cabernet?

2008-01-29T14:02:00.000+09:00

The Herald article number 2 can be found here and the article submitted can be found below. Given that the my column is only published once a fortnight it really does bring home how rubbish I am at posting usually. I will write up the Sauternes tasting soon though. A couple of people might be interested after all.

---------------

What’s in Your Cabernet?

There was a time when it felt like Cabernet Sauvignon was taking over the world. Every self-respecting New World (Australia, Chile, and North America) vineyard owner was ripping up their vines and re-planting this most distinguished varietal. With good reason too. Cabernet Sauvignon is responsible for arguably the world’s greatest wines.

When we get a true expression of Cabernet Sauvignon we can expect a wine with good primary fruit flavours, most commonly blackcurrant, but also many secondary flavours often very specific to the region or winemaker involved. It is this diversity of flavour combined with its ability to remain so very Cabernet Sauvignon that has led to the wine world’s romance with this grape.

Good Cabernet driven Bordeaux are well out of my price range unfortunately and so I am left with a hunt for reasonably priced expressions of Cabernet Sauvignon. This invariably leads to the New World and more often than not, single varietal wines. Today we have three bottles for review each with suitably different takes on the grape in question.

First up we have the Adobe Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, Chile (10,000w, Lotte Dept. Store Myongdong). There was a time when it was a widely held belief that any Chilean Cab Sauv would be good quality at a good price. There are plenty of bottles on the shelves in Korea that belie that belief but fortunately this is not one of them. This is an organic wine from a very strong budget priced Chilean producer. This is a fruit forward wine with blackcurrant so powerful you could be forgiven for thinking you had been given a glass of Ribena (blackcurrant juice). It also has those hints of cedar you might expect but this is not an overly complex wine. On the palate that blackcurrant keeps coming with sour plums and a really good, subtle mint finish. Though it suffers from slightly bitter tannins this is a cracking value bottle of wine. You have seen the price of Organic produce here haven’t you?

The final two bottles are both from a renowned Burgundy producer, Michel Laroche. These are interesting in that one is from France, Laroche Vin De Pays D’Oc 2005 (Vins De Maeils, 16,000w) the other from Chile, Laroche Punto Nino 2005 (Les Vins Maeils, 22,000w). We have an Old World/New World battle from the same producer! The French has a very un-giving nose, not especially fruity with a hint of dried fruit. It has a weedy mouth feel with some raisin and little else. It is not unpleasant but is difficult to recommend. The Chilean is much more upfront with a strong berry driven nose, blueberry, raspberry and strawberry. This is much softer fruit than I would expect though there is a touch of brambly, plum fruit and some subtle vanilla. It has a good, intense palate with tobacco, and bay leaf countering the chocolate and plums. It has really well integrated tannins and is, essentially, a lovely Cabernet Sauvignon.

As a footnote, the Lunar New Year has led to call centres being installed in many wine shops, (what better gift?) so if you can’t find, ask.

Vine, Kabinett and a couple of bargains.

2008-01-19T13:29:00.001+09:00

We had a day out and about yesterday which, as always, revolved around wine. We were in the Myeongdong area so were able to hit up a couple of wine shops in a short space of time. Shinsegae department store has a wonderful fine wine area that I had somehow missed in the past. Slightly shambolic and disorganised but with some real cracking bottles well out of my price range.

On to Lotte department store who appear to have put a call centre at the back of the shop. Whilst it bodes well for their business clients I am not sure if the walk through customers are benefiting. It was something of a battle to get near the sale items at the back of the shop, especially as they appear to employ 2 staff for every potential customer. It's a shame because every time I go there I seem to find some pretty good bargains. The Adobe Cabernet Sauvignon pictured above being one. 10,000w for an organically produced wine from a decent Chilean producer. I haven't tasted it yet but I know that in past vintages it was a wine that has punched well above its price point. I also picked up a bottle of South African Cab Sauv, again 10,000w, so I could do a comparison. You can't beat a good comparison.

I find shopping pretty knackering so we had a rest at the Vine wine bar in the Lotte hotel. It is a nice enough little hotel wine bar with pretty unappealing prices. I had a decent Barossa Shiraz at an indecent 24,000w, standard measure. Slightly better value was the Moet at 19,000w though unfortunately it was a little tired. You do get a nice selection of nuts though.

Then it was on to Itaewon to check out Kabinett. It has been reviewed endlessly recently and I won't add to those reviews just yet. I will say that it is a nice enough space, though it did feel like something was missing and that the wines by the glass were a little disappointing. The Groot Constantia Merlot is pretty good though and at a Happy Hour(6-8) price of about 8000w certainly much more palatable than the Vine prices.

The ever useful SeoulSteves have their wine of the month offer on the South African wines this month. Check it out.

Aggh, The Heralds Strangely Grim

2008-01-15T12:47:00.000+09:00

Fa la la la laaa, la la la laaaaa.

Edit: Now directly links to the Herald article thanks to EFL Geek. I knew there would be a way around it but I didn't think it would be that simple. 9 years in IT and what do I know? Nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, I am really happy to have the chance to write for a national newspaper and I really appreciate what the Herald has done. It is me that is the problem. I mean, I had nightmares about this last night. I should be excited to see my name in print for the first time since I did a poem for a local newspaper when I was 12. I should be, yet I just feel a great unease. My name there. My thoughts there. Appalling! I suspect that it is some cowardly belief that if you put your head above the parapet you are going to get shot at.

However, it is good to see the article published with very few changes. Next time, 2 weeks now folks, I will provide my own strap line if I can. I am not sure if beating up on the national drink in big black letters is such a great idea myself.

Anyway, parents, here is the link to the Heralds version. You need to click the Expat Living tab on the left, underneath Weekly. I still can't direct link, if anyone knows how..........

And here is the version I submitted to them this very Saturday:

It is an exciting time to be a wine drinker in Korea. Whilst you are sure to have frustrations, be they related to price or to range, it is difficult not to get caught up with the sheer enthusiasm in this rapidly developing market. When flicking through the TV channels it is no surprise to see a smartly be-suited man or woman wearing white gloves explaining to an eagerly nodding presenter about the joys of the particular bottle. They nod, smile, sniff and let out an appreciative 'Waahh!'. I love it. Pretentious, naff and ever so slightly silly yes, but it sure beats the hell out of Soju shots and beer bombs.

Wine lovers are much like record or book collectors, we love the thrill of the hunt. Perusing bottle after bottle, vintage after vintage, looking for that one stand out bottle that manages to combine great quality at a great price. If you can throw out some preconceived notions of how much a bottle of wine should cost, be your currency Dollars or Pounds, and work solely in Won then the bargains are here to be had. Whilst there is no alternative to the "Three Buck Chuck", in the 10 to 20,000 won range there is plenty of real quality and in the 20 to 50,000 won range you are spoilt for choice. Relatively speaking.

At this time of year it is traditional to turn your back on the finer things in life in the name of fitness(diet) and health(drink). The traditional January abstinence is all very well and good but as one of the more miserable months on the calendar I say why not instead embrace life's pleasures and save yourself the guilt of failure. Certainly it may be good to drink less but let's all drink better. Put down that pitcher, shy away from the soju and instead enjoy "Wine that maketh glad the heart of man."(The Book of Psalms, 104:15). My intention with this column is to highlight the wines that I think are worth drinking at the best prices I can find. There will be no 100 point rating system, merely a description and an opinion, wine is highly subjective and there is very rarely a right or wrong opinion on a particular bottle.

So, for this inaugural column we get to the first review and an absolute stand out bottle in terms of price. Argentinian wines are making some headway in the specialist wine shops and convenience stores here and this is good news for us consumers. There are a number of poor quality Chilean wines on the market and so the introduction of some South American competition can only lead to a boost in quality levels. The 2006 Alamos Malbec(11,000 won,Shindong wines, Hyundai department stores and elsewhere) is a textbook new world Malbec. Deep red in colour it offers up a good nasal hit of black fruit, blackcurrant and black cherry underpinned with some chocolate notes. This all follows through on the palate in a lovely, soft and fruity style that is wonderfully approachable. It is the kind of bottle that you will finish without realising. There is an Alamos Pinot at the same price which is also rather good and trust me, is a steal at the price.

Krug Grand Cuvee

2008-01-12T16:39:00.000+09:00

Krug Grand Cuvee NV.
Champagne, France.

Having been upgraded to business class on our Asiana flight to Heathrow Christmas got off to a good start in terms of Champagne consumption. They really do ply you with booze at the front of the plane! The Champagne on-board was Charles Heidseck, one of my favourite cheaper non vintage Champagnes. It is quite a rich, toasty style but has an excellent level of fruit to carry it through. It was much more satisfying than the single can of Cass I had in cattle class coming back.

Christmas 2007 was very much the booze Christmas at my house and one of the highlights for me was the Krug we had on Christmas eve. People talk about Krug a lot, for people in the wine industry it seems to be the favourite of all the Champagnes and I had been itching to try it. However the price is a little out of my reach. A staff discount and generous parents meant that this was my year to try.

It comes in a beautiful box and the bottle itself is very appealing. It is all very decadent. The mousse is very fine, tiny and persistent bubbles in a fairly deep, almost straw coloured wine. The nose is not the most giving of Champagnes I have had, it has delicate yeasty characteristics with a little apple and citrus.

When you take your first drink it is instantly apparent you are drinking a fine, fine Champagne. The first thought I had was elegant. It has very smooth, frothy bubbles with superb acidity and wonderfully balanced body and alcohol. It is supremely easy to drink and had, as my old man put it, "No edges". You get a good burst of fruit that is actually quite red, cherries at the forefront, followed by green fruit and citrus on the mid-palate with a long toasted nut finish.

This really is as good as they say. Drinking it next to another NV Champagne is very unfair and I certainly now have a favourite Champagne. My poor wallet. I am not sure what the best price in Korea is but lets just call it expensive. If you have something to celebrate and are a fan of the fizz I would say it is worth it anyway. What price pleasure eh?

Tuesday should see my first article in the new expat guide section of the Korea Herald. Given that this was meant to be a diary of my drinking I am a little uneasy about it all but also excited. Parker had better watch his back.

Christmas 2007

2008-01-10T15:31:00.000+09:00

Yes, Christmas 2007 was a beezer one for a boozer like me. I drank some real quality and just wish I had more time to get more in. I will post up some of the notes I made, Krug, Dom Perignon 96, Barsac and d'Yquem. They have little relation to my drinking in Korea but this is as good a place as any to gloat.

Pictured above is something far more humble but a real revelation for me, Sloe Gin. This was home made using handpicked South Downs sloes and London Gin by my parents. Given my fathers autistic meticulousness and my mothers abilities as a cook then it was always going to be good. Oh, it was good.

Now this is a Christmas drink, a beautiful deep, almost opaque, red it fair clings to the glass. That will be the alcohol and the sugar. On the nose there is little clue you are essentially drinking neat Gin. The botanics are masked by the intense fruitiness of the plum aromas. There is also a hint of almond that due to the sweetness is reminiscent of marzipan. I'd drink that!
It manages to be very tart and also very sweet, the perfect combination of mouthwatering fruit with sugary smoothness. It is like essence of stewed plums with almonds and a nicely integrated alcoholic backbone. It really is a great Christmas drink and is a throw back to fruit puddings you may have eaten as a child.

I have never seen Sloe Gin here and am pretty sure you cannot get hold of the fruit either. I am going to do some research to see if sloes can be replaced with particularly tart plums but I suspect that this is an import only prospect. A shame really as it is the sort of experience you want others to share.

Contrasting Countries Drink Safety Campaigns

2007-12-20T15:13:00.000+09:00

Thanks to Mongdori for this find. I have no idea what they are singing about, though I did understand the part about the headache.

In the UK at Christmas we get much more sombre and hard hitting drink driving campaigns. Worth taking note of.....

Korea's Taste for Expensive Wines Growing

2007-12-20T14:45:00.000+09:00

So says the Chosun Ilbo here.

Great to see growth and although I advocate spending more on each bottle of wine I hope it isn't all put out of balance by the top-top end. It still amazes me when I see the 1,000,000 won bottles of white Burgundy from not that great vintages. Somebody, somewhere, is getting right royally ripped off.

Champagne Supernova

2007-12-16T10:14:00.000+09:00

Christmas is nearly upon us and so it is a time to think about the serious business of drinking. Baby Jesus was born unto us so we would have an excuse to get blind drunk and vomit on the boss's shoes? No?

Well, it is a time for spending that little bit extra on our drink and I have found a couple of bargains for you. I haven't hunted down quite so much this year as I will be spending Christmas back in Blighty but will pass on my discoveries none the less.

The best discovery of the year by far is affordable non-vintage Champagne. Lotte department store have a sale on fizz that sees Lanson Black Label at 43,000 won and another even cheaper bottle at 41,000 won that I can't remember the name of. Lanson Black Label is a decent Champagne, good acidity with a crisp green apple character and a delicate yeasty nose. Perfect for Christmas.
The star Champagne find for me though is Pol Roger NV for 60,000won. You won't find it much cheaper than that in the UK and Pol Roger is a lovely rich style of Champagne, floral and soft with zesty fruit and real depth.

For reds I really recommend getting to a Hyundai department store and investigating Shindong wines Argentinians. The Alamos Malbec and Pinot are stunning value at 11,000 won and both offer a perfect easy drinking style. With the money you save on these you can stretch to another bottle of Champagne no? If you fancy something a little more robust then the wine store in Shinsegae department store has some good Australians to work on. Saltram Next Chapter Barossa Shiraz offers up a well structured fruity and spicy text book Shiraz at 29,000 won and if you can stretch a bit further they have Wynns of Coonawara wines starting at 40,000 won. It will be money well spent.

The last bottle I would recommend is the Royal Tokaji Aszu 5 puttonyos. At 40,000 won it is a little over priced(actually, a lot over priced) but there is something incredibly decadent and satisfying about a good dessert wine at Christmas. It has fantastic acidity and really is an amber nectar; honey, orange, spices and all that is nice in one glass. If you think you don't like sweet wines this is a glass that will change your mind.

Merry Christmas!

Wine and Korean Food.

2007-12-10T15:39:00.000+09:00

Chalk and cheese up there ^.

Jancis Robinson has done a couple of articles on Korea recently and one dealt with the issue of matching wine to Korean food. The first point worth making about this is the rather dismissive way in which we Westerners deal with the food of the East. We have this tendency to lump the cuisine of huge and diverse nations into a catch all phrase and so talk about Chinese food and Korean food. Whilst it is fair to see certain ingredients and methods in each countries cuisines when it comes to wine matching the method becomes somewhat redundant. Do we talk about matching wine to French food or to Italian food? No, we talk about matching wine to individual dishes. The match for Boeuf Bourguignon and Bouillabaisse are not the same. So, the match for Bibimbap and Bulgogi will not be the same. There is one other point worth making about the matching of wine and Korean food and that is the prevalence of Banchan. We have found the perfect wine to drink with our Dweji Galbi and then we have sides of crab, pancake, creamy salad and of course kimchi. That lovingly selected bottle of New Zealand Pinot is suddenly a little overwhelmed.

Can a match be made then? Of course, if we talk about individual dishes. For your grilled meats, bulgogi, galbi et all, you are looking for a fruity, low tannin red, the aforementioned NZ Pinot Noir being a good example of this.

For seafood we need to be looking to a thirst quencher with brisk acidity. Rieslings will fit the bill perfectly and may have enough acidity to cope with some of the spices. Bear in mind that overly spicy food, like the bul dak, are going to be too much for any wine. Go for the beer or soju.

Finally, this website here, recommends sherry with Korean tapas. I can certainly see that the strength of flavour of a good sherry might be able to stand up to some of the bolder flavours. So, head over to Les Vins Maeils an pick up some sherry, we need to be supporting the pioneers!

The Jancis Robinson article was based on information from Jeanine Cho Lee, soon to be Asia's first Master of Wine. It is great to have a Korean born woman pioneering in the Asian wine world and as someone who is studying for the WSET Diploma, considered one step behind Master of Wine(heh, get me!), I have nothing but respect for her commitment and dedication to her studies. Being outside of the wine industry and in a developing country, in terms of wine, makes it all the more difficult. Fair play to her.

"....so gauche, so crashingly crass...."

2007-12-08T12:40:00.000+09:00

Not related to Korea in any way and not really related to wine but this story caught my eye this morning. If you had a spare £35,000, an odd $70,000, a meagre 70,000,000 won lying around then what better way to spend it than on a single drink. It actually doesn't sound very good to me, certainly it is not very imaginative and we all know that Rosé Champagne is a right rip off. Don't we? I would be worried about the diamond ring as well. I reckon if I were to buy this drink I would have to be pretty drunk already so there is a good chance I am going to choke on it.

I have had Cristal before. I can't really remember it but I seem to recall it being a little underwhelming. Interesting thing about Cristal, the reason it comes in a clear bottle is it was created for Tsar Alexander the Second who was worried that people wanted to 'do him in'. Therefore he demanded that the bottles were made clear so a bomb couldn't be hidden in them/poison couldn't be hidden in them(I have heard both stories), the bottles were made with crystal glass hence the name. I actually think they look quite unappealing when unwrapped from their lucozade style wrapping.

The most I have ever spent on a single drink? Probably £14 for a glass of champagne in the Mandarin Oriental, London. I have also spent £8 on a pint of Stella here. I am pretty sure that doesn't represent value.

I am very excited about the fight tomorrow. I believe they are showing it on KBS sports here. I will be cheering Hatton on eating chip butties and drinking Duvel. Neither gauche nor crashingly crass but perhaps ever so slightly vulgar.

The Argentinians Are Coming

2007-12-04T15:34:00.000+09:00

Look how happy every ones favourite Argentinian looks. That is a bit like me in Hyundai Shindong wines the other day.

There are an increasing number of Argentinian wines kicking about in Korea. This is great news. Whilst they don't necessarily make the worlds great fine wines I think that they currently offer better bang for your buck than the oft lauded Chilean wines. I will write up a proper tasting for some of these but we have had an Argento Cabernet Sauvignon which was fruity, uncomplicated and absolutely delicious. Buy The Way about 17,000 won.

Shindong wines, which appears to have a branch in every Hyundai department store are currently having something of a sale. The highlights? The Argentinians. Alamos Malbec and Alamos Pinot Noir, 11,000won. A Pinot for 11,000 won is pretty incredible. I haven't tried the Pinot yet but the Malbec is a great, slightly green peppery, black fruit wine which would be excellent with a good Argentinian steak.

Spanish Wines on the Rise

The Korea Herald, who annoyingly won't let me link directly to a page so you have to click weekender on the left and then click the article on Spanish wines, has an article on Spanish wines. Not all that interesting except for one line :- "According to Bada, the Protos Verdejo 2006 is selling in Korea now." I haven't seen this but another new white varietal coming on sale has to be good news. With this and the arrival of the Argentinians perhaps we can look forward to seeing some Torrontes too.

Valdespino Inocente Fino Sherry

2007-11-26T14:46:00.000+09:00

Valdespino Inocente Fino Sherry, Spain, Les Vins Maeils, Jamsil. 20,000won(ish)

The time has come. The moment we have all been waiting for. The Sherry post. I get my hands on the drink forever associated with old women, tramps and Father Christmas. With the Sherry Institute, many notable restaurateurs, importers and the wine trade all banging away at how fashionable and food friendly Sherry really is I have been beaten. I am convinced that this is the perfect, complex, aged wine at a reasonable price that I have been looking for.

As far as I am aware the only place to get hold of sherry in Korea is from Les Vins Maeils. With the coming of Tapas bars here perhaps we can look forward to seeing more, though I have yet to visit a Tapas place in Seoul and so cannot vouch for their authenticity. Getting hold of something that I previously couldn't is a real bonus though and gives me hope for better variety across the board as the Wine industry here grows.

Sherry is an interesting wine, the process of vinification is fairly complex with a solera system that guarantees consistency within the product year after year. It means that although there is no vintage date on the wine, due to blending across the vintage, you are getting a wine that has been aged for at least three years. Usually at a very reasonable price.

The Inocente Fino, pictured above, is produced by Valdespino, the oldest Jerez bodega has around 700 years history of making the stuff. You would hope they have mastered the art. Thankfully I think they have. Unfortunately I am not sure I like it so much.

It is a pale straw colour in the glass with legs giving an indication of the 15% alcohol. I really liked the nose on this. It is very, very nutty. It has pistachio, almost like Pistachio ice cream, walnut, a little leather, yeast and an appealing fresh wet wood thing going on. Lots to think about and really nice then.

In the mouth it is quite delicate, light bodied with really well integrated alcohol. You get a bitter, green olive burst which is quickly chased away by a long Willy Wonkaesque finish. It is like Christmas days nut mix with almonds, walnuts, pistachio and the freshly polished leather of the seat you are sitting in. It keeps on giving with some vanilla tones which adds to the ice cream hints on the nose and has a slightly herbal quality to it.

When I describe this wine I love it. In fact when I was doing the tasting note I loved it. It was only when I was sitting in front of the TV just having a drink that I decided I didn't like it. It is just a bit much maybe. I suspect it will definitely benefit from pairing with food, see the link above, but I can't imagine too many situations where this is the drink I would want to crack open. The aromas and flavours are fantastic, complex and well balanced but there is something just so.......Sherry about it.

I would recommend trying a bottle. It is an interesting and really well made bottle of wine. Just have an occasion to open it. It is not a wine to drink whilst watching the footy.

The New Look.

Having updated the look of the blog I could do with some feedback. If you had an epilectic fit reading the above then let me know and I will change the black. I am conflicted. I quite like the black but suspect it is not so easy on the eye.

Beaujolais Nouveau

2007-11-23T15:13:00.000+09:00

Thorin Beaujolais Nouveau 2007
Burgundy, France.
16,000won GS Mart

Ahem. One, two. One two. Is this thing on?

November came and November has pretty much gone with Wine Korea neglecting his duties terribly. I apologise unreservedly.

November, the third Thursday in November to be exact, sees the release of Beaujolais Nouveau(BN from now on), a wine made from Burgundy's third grape, Gamay. Japan and Germany are the two biggest markets but Korea is a real growth area and the posters are up in all the convenience stores and wine bars are doing their promotions.

I had never tried BN before. I have tasted Grand Cru Beaujolais and found them OK in a 'I am not really bothered if I try this again' sort of way. They lack a bit of depth but perhaps I have never tried a great one. However, when your local Family Mart owner excitedly tells you about his new wine you have to ask yourself two questions, do I drink too much and should I be trying this exciting new(NOUVEAU!) drink. Yes to both questions and so I bought from GS Mart in order to hide any alcoholic tendencies from Mr Kim. I baulked at the 16,000 won price tag but figured it was the equivalent of three pitchers of Prime Max and can you put a price on new experiences?

It comes in a very exciting bottle, it seems very festive and has explosions of fireworks or flowers or something. It felt like an occasion! In the glass it is very pale, as you would expect. Beaujolais is produced using a process called carbonic maceration(I won't go into the details here) which essentially means there is little colour and tannin extraction going on. It looks like pop.

It has a bubblegum nose with bananas that are just about to be inedible. It is fruity as well with typical red fruit smells, confected strawberry and cherry. Also smelling like old skool alcopops (before they had worked out how to make alcohol taste good for kids) and swimming pools, it is not the most appealing bouquet.

Drinking is not much better I am afraid. Thin and sharp with no body to speak of you get cranberry juice and a follow through of strawberries and cherries but I couldn't get past the vomit like quality. I don't like my wines to taste of sick. Apparently 2007 was a reasonable vintage and I know it is a simple wine that is meant to be short of body and length but I just can't help thinking you could spend your money in so many better ways. I saw a bottle of Chilean Pinot Noir for 20,000won in Jamsil and though I haven't tasted it I am almost certain it will be another light, fruity red but with bags more character than BN.

I picked up a sherry! 20,000 won(ish) for a half bottle of Fino. I thought it was quite over priced until I checked the internet and saw that this is actually a very fair price. I have my almonds ready and will do a tasting this weekend. I know you are all very excited.

Oh! Also check out SeoulSteves for a Pieroth wine deal. They have put together a monthly wine club at Kabinett and a half case offer. It reminds me I must check out the bar and put together my own Christmas wine list.

Goats Do Roam In Villages

2007-10-26T15:19:00.000+09:00

Goats Do Roam In Villages,
South Africa
24,000 won Les Vins Maeils, Jamsil

This is a wine I was a fan of back in England and therefore I am not going to give it a big write up. It is a 7-8 pound wine in the UK, making this look not too bad a price here. This is a blend of 80% Syrah(Shiraz) and 20% Pinotage. It has a screw cap which will please all but the ultra-traditionalists I think and is really an excellent wine. A great colour in the glass it has a distinct dark fruit and spice aroma and is just full bodied enough to make you stop and think when it hits the palate. It has lovely plums and cherries with good hints of spice and tannins that are really well integrated giving a perfect wine for the coming cold months. You can't argue with it really. A super wine. The white that Goats Do Roam do is also excellent and I let Les Vins Maeils know this. You never know.........

The Chosun Ilbo has had a couple of interesting articles on wine this week. The first, here, was by their corespondent in France and he makes a comparison between the Korean wine market and the last two French Presidents. The thrust of his argument is that Korea used to be like Sarkozy who doesn't like wine and now they are like Chirac who is a wine snob. Ok, very clever. However I am not entirely sure what he is suggesting the Korean consumer should be doing. He laments their following of trends, be it wellbeing or the latest Manga. He bemoans the CEO's purchasing of only the most expensive wines. He suggests that we would all be far better off like the French where wine is part of the culture. Not. Going. To. Happen.

Korea is a new wine market and it shows all the signs of this. The fact that the wine market is surging at all is remarkable. There is very little advertising of wines and so crazes like "The Drop of God" and the well-being movement are excellent in that they are increasing awareness of and interest in wine. CEO's will always buy the most expensive wines just as they always buy the most expensive cars. The same happens in France I am sure. In order for wine to really take off here we need the distribution of a wide variety of wines and we need this to be done at reasonable prices. We need everyday wines at prices that your average customer won't baulk at paying and we need a large popular brand to make a big push here. Wine will never be part of the culture here just as it isn't part of the culture of the UK. What we can look forward to is a country that has a wide distribution of world wines and from that basis we can build an interest in the nuances of wine drinking.
A French sommelier advised, "If you want to taste wine better, walk in a forest or a park and smell as many flowers and plants as possible." I can't think of a better way of scaring off potential wine drinkers.

The second article, here, looks at the Korean Food and Drug administrations decision to state that the safe limit of red wine to drink is half a glass a day. Anything above this, they say, could lead to a cancer danger due to the levels of ethyl carbamate. I'll be honest, I hadn't heard about ethyl carbamate until I read this so it was of some interest to me. It certainly sounds like it is an issue and the fact that it occurs in fermented products, such as soy, at higher levels makes it all the more worrying for those of us in Korea. I am pretty sure that this would make safe levels of Soju consumption a cap full but I think we all knew that anyway. The interesting point, I thought, was that ethyl carbamate occurs in higher levels in products fermented at higher temperatures, thus in distilled products we get the most ethyl carbamate and more in red wine than white(which is largely distilled at cool temperatures to keep purity of fruit). Whilst it would be a shame to see red wine sales drop because of this, especially given red wines many healthy properties it would be welcome to see a Korean wellbeing white wine extravaganza!

Sherry!

2007-10-21T15:29:00.000+09:00

No bullshit! I have found sherry. I didn't think it would happen but today, in Les Vins Maeils Jamsil I discovered sherry. A Fino and an Amontillado. Proper sherry. Unfortunately they wouldn't sell it to me. I know, rubbish shopping experience really. I think the nice young lady was telling me they were samples but I was so keen that I was told I should be able to buy on Monday. I will head down next weekend and try and make sure I come home with some. I don't even know if I like sherry very much but I know I like the idea and I know they are some of the best value wines in the world. I'll keep you posted. Also they are doing Goats Do Roam, an oh so funny play on Cotes Du Rhone. They only have the red which I haven't tried before but I know the white is excellent and so have high hopes. 24,000 won.

Also, Shindong wines range seems to have improved. They have a selection of fairly reasonably priced wines from Argentinia. I have a couple and will update when they have been consumed.

Also, thanks to Seoul Steves for the heads up on limes at Shinsegae. They have been spotted in the wild at Lotte Department Store and Hyundai Dept Store as well.

Also, Hyundai department store Cheonho has kebabs. Chicken doner and beef doner. I didn't try one but they looked pretty good.

Also, caviar! Yep, caviar. Beluga, Sevruga and Ossetra. This was in Lotte Dept store at the wine shop on the bottom floor. Beluga was 250,000 won which doesn't seem that outrageous to me. Dedicated decadent that I am.

Also, and I promise this is the last also, Aquascutum shirts and ties for 29,000 won at Hyundai in Cheonho.

It has been an exciting weekend.

Chateau Mousear

2007-10-15T15:45:00.001+09:00

I had a very mature Musar a few years back. I was underwhelmed but it was at the beginning of my wine discovery so maybe I just didn't get it. I believe that is quite a common reaction to the Musar wines though, some love them others are non-plussed.

Anyway, that is by the by, the picture is only there for the awful pun made. I introduce Korean Mouse wine. Korean Baby Mouse Wine. Not something I will be tasting anytime soon but as it has been doing the rounds on the internet I thought I should share.

To real wine.......

I missed out on Korea's "Wine day". As you can see in this Korea Times article it ran over this weekend just gone and looks like there may have been some reasonable discounting going on. I am not too upset as I would imagine that most of the discounted bottles would have been the usual crap they push, the real cheap Chilean and sweet wines. Still, I should have checked out some of the offers so if anyone did and there was a decent showing please let me know. The fact they are offering a 50% discount in some cases is a good indication of the mark up already present.

The article talks up "daily wines" and goes on to list a selection of the reasonably priced wines the author thinks are of good quality. They suggest ignoring the old world wines, Laroche Viognier anyone?, and list 7 wines, 6 red 1 white, to try out. So I think I will. I am certainly intrigued by the Matthew Fox, an American blend of Cab Sauv and Merlot, very traditional so far, with Chardonnay! Sounds revolting to me but you have to try these things. Perhaps I will have to swill my mouth with the mouse wine to get rid of the taste. Terrible snobbery I know.

Sideway Wine

2007-10-10T14:25:00.000+09:00

Sideway Wine Bar and Bistro
Gangnam

It is with great pleasure that I report on this new Wine Bar in Gangnam and it is an establishment I urge any wine lover to hunt out as soon as they can. There is little doubt in my mind that it is a class above any other similar bar you have been to in Seoul. A grand statement perhaps, but one I feel I can back up fairly easily.

I will comment on the most important aspect first and that is, of course, the wine list. Normally opening a wine list in a Korean bar or restaurant is a fairly depressing exercise. You are confronted with the same group of wines over and over with the only real difference being just exactly how large a mark up the establishment has dared slap on an average bottle of wine. I suspect that to a certain degree the classier more aspirational ventures mark out their territory by making even a very average bottle almost out of reach. The worst example of this I have seen is a bar in Apgujeong that charges 45,000 won, around 23 pounds, for a bottle of Torres Vina Sol, at most a 10,000 won/5 pound bottle. Very discouraging eh?

Sideway is not a miracle worker, you are still paying Korean prices for your wine, but they are sensible. The sort of prices that make you want to trade up a bit and get that slightly better bottle. The sort of prices that you can justify quite quickly in your head. We picked up a Hugel Gewurztraminer for 53,000 won. Like I say, not a miracle, just sensible. I am pretty sure there was a Chablis on the list for 60,000 won, try finding that anywhere else in Seoul.

The other encouraging thing about the list is the range, it is not huge but it is interesting. Easy to read, sensibly structured and with none of the typical Montes Alpha dullness. It has the Laroche Viognier which I have bigged up on here before. I would like to see the wine list online though, but that is just for me now as I cannot actually remember much of the list.

So, a good, keenly priced wine list. What of the bar? It sits on top of the hill at Gangnam near the Euro Pub and Sky Bar. It has a curved frontage with veranda seating decked out with wine bottles. Stylish and comfortable and perhaps still doable in the early evening now the temperatures are coming down. Inside is designed with several individual areas in mind. Around the bar is, who would have thought it, bar seating, high stools and tables, running up the window are large, and extremely comfortable looking white leather sofas and then to the rear is a darker, more conventional sofa and table set up. It is not too dark, not intimidating and mostly manages to pull off style and comfort in the same space.

I didn't see their menu which is on a cheese theme. I did however try their cheese. Real cheese. That tastes of cheese. You wouldn't have thought it would be so incredible but it knocked my socks off. Being able to eat real cheese should be reason enough to get you there.

So, I have waxed lyrical for the first time on this blog? It is a wine bar that does wine well. It is that simple. Knowledgeable and genuinely nice owners, a wine shop attached where the wines can be bought at a discount, good cheese. We need to be supporting places like this if we want the exorbitant prices charged for identikit wine to change here in Korea.

To get there take exit 7 at Gangnam station, walk straight up the main road until you get to Paris Baguette, take the road to the right up the hill and keep walking, up past the Euro pub and around the corner. You can't really miss it.

Corking News.

2007-10-05T09:40:00.000+09:00

I've had two bottles of corked wine in Korea. Both from Burgundy interestingly enough. Is that interesting? Yeah, course it is. The first bottle was about 8 months ago from Les Vins Maeils at Jamsil and I bottled it in terms of dealing with the issue. I should have returned it and explained the situation but my lack of Korean meant this was a terrifying concept. So I just did myself out of about 30,000won and poured it down the sink.

The most recent bottle was a Louis Latour(excellent negociant and producer of Burgundy) Chardonnay from the new Homeplus/Tesco at Jamsil. I was hoping for a lightly oaked, simple white Burgundy at a not unreasonable 24,000w. It smelled of mouldy clothes(more of which later). However, on my first visit to the store I had the good fortune to meet with one of the marketing managers of Tesco who was taking a hands on role in the wine club. We talked for a little while and exchanged details, hopefully leading to some sort of wine club for foreigners in the future, we will see. This meant I had an excellent source of information on a company's policy towards corked wine. So I emailed. The good news is that Tesco policy appears to be that they will happily exchange a bottle of corked wine. I say appears to be as until my complaint there had been no instances of this happening.

In my previous life in the wine industry our policy was to exchange corked wines with no questions asked and I think this is the only sensible policy to adopt. Something faulty has been sold and the customer is perfectly within their rights for a new bottle. However this policy only applied to bottles under 20 pounds. Fine wines were sold as seen and there was no guarantee of how they had been kept before they made it to our store. Given the price of wines in Korea this raises a few problems, going over 40,000 won a bottle is really not hard to do and so the cost of corked wines to the retailer is exponentially higher. With corked bottles running up to an estimated 15% there is the potential for some hefty losses.

This is something that will only come with more education fortunately(for the retailers). I am pretty sure that the majority of corked wines are drunk, even in more established markets, with people putting it down to an unpleasant bottle of wine. Without knowing what you are looking for it is very easy to assume that it is you who has made the mistake in your initial purchase. I will say this, generally, if a wine doesn't smell good then there is a fault with it. Trust your nose. I equate the smell with clothes that have been left damp for too long. That musty, lingering smell that can be quite subtle but once detected leaves an insidious stain on your nostrils that can haunt you through the day. In a wine I tend to find my initial reaction is something is not right followed by a detection of the cork taint followed by an inability to smell anything but the damp nastiness. Sorry, smell is a bit subjective and I can't describe it better.

Having the confidence to return a bottle of spoiled wine is actually quite liberating. You are trusting your ability to detect problems and taking it back to the experts and leaving them with the decision of how to deal with it. If you are only spending a couple of pounds, euros or dollars however then the bad smell might well be the wine itself. Trade up!

I haven't been drinking

2007-09-27T15:58:00.000+09:00

Well, that is not strictly true. I have been drinking, just not wine. Or at least not in any great quantity, nor of any great quality and certainly not with any great clarity. Since returning from England I have written a feeble two tasting notes, both Pinot Noirs, one from Burgundy one from New Zealand. An interesting comparison that I will write up. Other than that I have abstained from my duties. A hangover from the holiday? A rebellion with the new working year? The laziness that has followed me through life kicking in? I suspect the latter.

Fear not! I have some major work to do on the Diploma over the coming months and so I will have to get my arse back into gear. Also I can feel the weather, miserable as it persists to be here, leading me to desire nice big red wines. Something to knock you off kilter mid-conversation. Also, I am once again getting bored to death of the lagers and so I think it is about time I started investigating some of the more unfathomable Korean and Asian drinks.

With a complete absence of Peter O'Toole as Jeffrey Bernard video clips on the internet, have this instead.

Notes On Smell

2007-08-31T12:49:00.000+09:00

I had inaccurately diagnosed myself with a cold. The blocked and runny nose had been sufficient for me to make the assumption. No headache, no sore throat. And no smell.
When you realise your illness is not what you thought and start researching symptoms on the internet it gets quite depressing. I got quite depressed. I can pinpoint the moment when I lost hope. I had just attempted to sniff a packet of kimchi that had been open for too long in the fridge. I stuck my not insignificant snout in the foil bag and whiffed it up. Nothing. The air seemed to pass up my nose and into my lungs but with not even a hint of scent registered. I got as far as the bedroom door with the packet for the SO to confirm that it did indeed smell. With added swearing.
Losing your sense of smell is not taken as seriously by the medical profession as losing one of your other senses would be. Rightly so. In a deli in Southampton a woman at the cheese counter said she would rather be blind than lose her sense of smell. It is a ludicrous thing to say. For sure, an odourless world is a less colourful one but I never sniff the road before crossing it(except perhaps in Sheffield where one has to be sure you aren't getting too close to Bramall Lane).
All those wines waiting for me at home and me without the apparatus to taste. Most upsetting. Doxycycline did the trick. Prescribed on the Tuesday by Thursday I had my hallelujah moment. I had, somewhat autistically, taken upon it myself to sniff everything I came into contact with at my parents. My theory was it is like a type of nose training. Trying to spark my nasal memory. Also my parents house is one of the nicer smelling places in the world. Coffee was the first smell, ground coffee is a fairly strong and distinctive smell though and I suspected I was fantasising and so I turned to the Jasmine Tea. I think I whooped. Then to cloves, to marmite, bananas and peaches. Man the world is a good smelling place. It should be said though that the world also stinks and being acutely aware of smell all the time is not such a great thing. I am starting now to try and not smell everything. To turn off my peripheral odour detection so to speak.

My first drink was a glass of champagne in the massively over-priced Roast. It tasted almost exactly like apple crumble and was delicious for that. I enjoyed the taste of a variety of beers especially Greene King IPA which I have to thank for being low in alcohol and so allowing me to drink far more than I should have.
To write up is a Grand Crus Chablis which went from meh to excellent and back to meh again in one tasting note. I am not sure where I stand on it still. Also two classed growth Bordeaux significant for being rubbish, a 1980 Port significant for making my mam wonder if it was responsible for an upset stomach, a NZ Pinot significant for being Cloudy Bay and a NZ Pinot Gris significant for being surprisingly refreshing and good.

Pieroth Warehouse Sale

2007-08-01T16:49:00.000+09:00

This weekend saw the Pieroth Warehouse sale at Ncheese in Apkujeong go ahead as blogged below. It wasn't the easiest of places to find, our taxi driver asked several people before giving up and dumping us next to a garage. Fortunately Ncheese, or Pieroth themselves, seemed to have had the foresight to employ some old dude on a bike to ride around pointing likely looking candidates in the right direction. As he immediately assisted us we must look exactly like the sort of people who would be in the market for wine and cheese. I am not sure if this is good news or not.

The sale was held in a small basement in Ncheese, we didn't really get a chance to scope the whole place but it has a good cellar like feel to it. It felt quite European and so we felt quite at home. The tables were laid out by country with white wines separated from reds and chilled in ice buckets. This meant that some of the wines that had been sitting for some time would have been far too cold to taste. I say 'would have' because I didn't taste anything. I could detect sweet, sour, bitter and tannins but not a sausage else. My long running battle with a summer cold had reduced my palate to that of cotton wool. Very disappointing. To be fair the situation wasn't ideal for a good tasting anyway, small plastic cups and the aforementioned temperature issues would have limited it but it would have been nice to taste something. The SO was my official taster and we put together a reasonable case of 12 without breaking the bank. Needless to say, all the wines she really liked were the expensive ones. A woman after my own heart.

The event itself had issues too. It was a very small room and so finding somewhere to stand and assess was a problem. I like to lean myself and the cellar like walls left a cellar like residue on my shirt. Also, we had the "beautiful people" to contend with. The "beautiful people" wore sunglasses. Inside. In a cellar. The "beautiful people" had their own, impressively large, tasting glasses. The "beautiful people" seemed to studiously ignore white wine. The "beautiful people" seemed intent on keeping me away from the Amarone, the one wine open that I may have had a chance to actually taste(I could, kind of, pretty powerful stuff that elicited an "UFF" of pleasure from SO).

The only other issue really was the salesman we had to deal with. I don't really get on with sales people. I like information not bluster. I like someone who actually listens to my responses. To be fair to him, the minute he described the wines as his and how he would be unable to get anymore in if we didn't buy today he was on a losing streak. Self-aggrandising behaviour is not a method I would use to sell wine. He was clearly on a commission, he insisted we use his name on our order sheet to gain a 5% discount. I am pretty sure we didn't get that. He annoyed both of us on separate occasions through his inability to actually listen to responses to his questions as well. Still, sales people are sales people the world over.

We took delivery this afternoon after a failed delivery yesterday. My request to have a delivery after 1 o'clock was met with no problems. We were 1 bottle down on delivery, I called Pieroth and they were extremely helpful and are sending the missing bottle separately. All in all it was a worthwhile event for us, despite my negativity above. I have a nice varied selection of bottles to write up once I shake this cold once and for all.

Winding Down

2007-07-24T12:41:00.000+09:00

Countdown

Things will be winding down on the blog for the next two weeks. I can't afford wine at the minute as I will be no doubt spending a fortune in England. Not least on wine.

I have some great bottles waiting for me, a Corton Charlemagne, a Volnay and some rather good Champagne. No doubt it will be a great pleasure writing those up.

Very disappointing bottle of Chilean Cabernet this weekend. It is the 2003 Panul Reserve from Errazuriz, an excellent Chilean producer. I paid more than I should have, 28,000 no less, and was so hoping for a good bottle. It didn't give out at all.
I do have a bit of a cold but this wine was as tight as my mate Bryn. The nose was giving a hint of the Cabernet standards, the palate seemed well structured, but having swilled and slurped and sucked I finally had a normal drink and it tasted of nothing. A great shame. Why was this wine so closed? I have no idea, I suspect if it had been opened a few months before it might have been good and if it was opened a few months later it might have been good. Just bad luck here.

I am going to try and get hold of a bottle of Australian Moscato today, it has been described as Appletize on steroids which sounds entertaining. Also, we have the Pieroth warehouse sale this weekend. Having looked over the list I am hoping to put a couple of cases together so there should be plenty to write about when we get back from Blighty.

Lastly, I will point you to Wine Library TV. The host, Gary Vaynerchuck, is a bit of a prat but he is passionate and seems to like similar wines to me. It is a fairly entertaining show and he does some really good and worthwhile comparisons.

GS Mart Taste-Off

2007-07-17T13:04:00.001+09:00

Casa Toscana Chianti, DOCG, Italy, 2005

Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, 2005.

18,000 for the two in a GS Mart deal.

I am sorry I can't remember the name of the Chilean, a victim of recycling again. You will recognise it if you see it though, a red label and the only Chilean Cab Sauv that GS do, I think.

Well, these are interesting for two reasons. The first is the price, 18,000 for two bottles is not to be sniffed at and the second is for a budget comparison of old world vs new world wines.

No great detail on the wines here and I will deal with them in the order they were drunk. So, first to Chile.
Chile has long been regarded as a good place to go hunting for good value, decent quality reds. I seem to remember reading somewhere, many years ago, that when in doubt a Chilean Cab Sauv will always please. Is it the same here? The nose is not bad, blackcurrant, slightly jammy, with a real coffee bean feel to it. Do Starbucks do blackcurrant syrup with their coffee? If they do then this is what I imagine it would smell of. Or maybe a coffee flavoured Ribena. Anyway, it is not a bad nose no matter how bad the above product ideas sound.

The drink? It is inoffensive. Blackcurrant juice with a touch of acidity, the softest of tanins and a silky mouth feel. It is so inoffensive it is uninspiring. No one will complain if you get it out for a barbecue, they will probably get drunk on it. It is a wine that is difficult to say anything about to be honest. For the price you would probably have few complaints.

Chiantis are always a gamble, though perhaps more so in the past. They fall under the DOCG classification, Italy's answer to the French AOC controls. It is a guarantee of quality, of sorts.
It has the classic sour cherry notes on the nose and not a lot else. Perhaps a touch of sweaty leather, there is something other than fruit which I couldn't put my finger on.

Drinking wise it is miles from the Chilean, acidic and tannic with the sour cherry following straight through. Decent length on it too. As far as drinking on its own it is a no brainer, you wouldn't really do it. Unlike the Chilean you wouldn't put this away with little thought while watching TV. It would probably pair pretty well with hearty, meaty dishes. Something Italian you will be amazed to hear. Or perhaps Galbi.

A real contrast between old and new world then, on the one hand an acidic, tannic wine that could probably be described as rustic that will work reasonably with food or a soft, fruity, juicy wine that is completely characterless. Which do I prefer? I drank all the Chilean, the Chianti made it into the lasagne....... Despite describing the Chilean as uninspiring and characterless it is eminently quaffable. The story with the Chianti is.......I don't mind working for pleasure, to find the characters of the wine and match with food, but here we just have a rustic wine that in reality does not give that much pleasure.

I am having to save money at the moment, I am back in England for 2 weeks from August 11th and I know how I spend money at home(Now that is a proper blog sentence! 4 I's.). Still, with the number of quality wines waiting for me at home at least the Wine Korea blog can look forward to a few postings on some of the higher end wines for a couple of weeks. New Zealand Pinot this week. Had a glass. Like being punched in the face by a raspberry.

Chateau Haut-Bages Averous

2007-07-07T11:16:00.001+09:00

Chateau Haut-Bages Averous, Pauillac, Bordeaux, France, 2001
55,000W Les Vins, Kyobo Building, Jamsil

After the disappointment of the 2004 it was with some trepidation that I opened this. The 2004 was a long way from being ready to drink and honestly didn't give much pleasure at all. I know this is a good wine though and so was willing to take a chance on a different, older, vintage. This is the second wine of the acclaimed 5th Growth Chateau, Lynch Bages.

It is a nice dark ruby wine with a slight pink rim. The nose is really good, an explosion of raspberries and cherries with the expected Cabernet blackcurrant. There is a little more complexity than just the fruit though and there is the cigar box and cedar one might expect as well as a lovely mintiness. I really like it when Cabernet driven wines give off mint, I always find it surprising and exciting! Yes, exciting.

The palate is, thankfully, great. There is a fairly intense burst of blackcurrant backed up, again, by cedar/cigar box and the mintiness. It has a little spiciness with some gentle clove flavours which linger on a long finish, that is rich smooth and has a really good chocolate quality to it. With good body, acidity and tannins this is a really well balanced bottle of wine. Obviously it is not a cheap wine but it is a great, approachable Bordeaux that won't break the bank. Recommended.

Emart today, I fancy some crisp whites to drink in the sun. Might treat myself to a new world Pinot as well. Also, got very excited coming home from work yesterday, GS Mart are selling some new beers! Duvel, Kronenburg, Cobra and an Italian beer. I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

Pieroth Warehouse Sale

2007-07-06T13:20:00.000+09:00

Click the picture to bigify.

I haven't talked about Pieroth before and I probably should.

Pieroth are a company that operate on an excellent premise, let your customers taste the wines and then they will buy them. It is such a simple idea yet so few retailers do it. It is happening increasingly in the UK and I am hugely excited to try out the new shop in Islington, The Sampler which offers ridiculous fine wines to sample(5 weeks and counting!).
Through the Pieroth website you can arrange a tasting, whereby someone who knows their stuff, in our case the CEO Dan Schulte, will talk you through the wines and offer you tastings of each. There is no obligation to buy but the idea is you will find enough wines you like to put together a case of 12. The prices are much more competitive due to buying by the case and so you are getting a wine you know you like at a good price. Whats not to like about that? The only negative I could find was they didn't offer mixed cases, you had to buy 6 of each bottle. For me this was not so useful, I need as much variety as possible and so I didn't buy from them. No sweat.

Which brings me to the warehouse sale. Mixed cases! 5% to 10% discount! Free delivery in Seoul and the chance to try some of their fine wines, Barolo and Amarone to name but two. There are two dates, the 21st of July in Hongdae and the 28th in Apkujong. I am booked into the 28th of July date and am hoping to put together a nice mixed case to see me through the summer. I think this is a no lose offer, especially with the chance to eat real cheese.

To book yourself on to one of the dates click here and state the date you are interested in. I should probably ask for advertisement money eh?

Vine Training

2007-07-04T13:52:00.000+09:00

Fear not, not a blog on the Geneva Double Curtain, the above should read wine training. Perhaps.

The Nintendo DS, recently released here in Korea, is getting 3 titles all based on drinking. Bartender DS dedicated to bar mixology, Sakashou DS dedicated to Sake and Sommelier DS dedicated to the choosing and tasting of fine wine!
Sommelier DS is getting a July release in Japan, useless to me of course, but as HMV have it listed on their website I am hopeful for an English language version. If it does become available in English I will be sure to check it out. I was always better at Super Mario Kart when drunk.

Nowt as queer as oak.

2007-07-01T11:33:00.000+09:00

Nederburg Chardonnay, Western Cape, South Africa, 2003 10,000w from Lotte Dept Store Jamsil(Big sale on at the moment)

Laroche Viognier, Vins de Pays D'Oc, France, 2005 12,000w from Les Vins, Kyobo building Jamsil(Big sale on at the moment!)

We have two very different wines here. One of which I would say is the best deal I have found in Korea so far.

First to the New World and a South African Chardonnay. The SO had a desire for an over the top Chardonnay, ripe and oaky like they all were a few years ago. This certainly matched up to her desires. I should say first that 10,000w for a New World wine is pretty impressive here, you very rarely see wines at that price.

The appearance of this wine tells you quite a lot. It is a pretty intense lemon green, when I say intense I mean dark. It's like the water you might pass after a very heavy night on the beers. I know, it is an unpleasant truth...... What does this colour tell us? It can mean one of two things usually on a dry wine, the first is age, something we can rule out here, the second is a significant exposure to oak, something that becomes very apparent on the nose.

The nose is pretty intense. An analogy might be an oak tree falls on your head and the monkeys that were living in the tree take offence and pummel your face with butter, popcorn, coconuts and eventually take pity on you and give you some melons. Yeah, it is a pretty stupid wine. The fruit is on the back burner here, it is creamy, vanilla oak that is hitting you. It is not unpleasant by any means, just incredibly rich.

The palate is actually not quite as unbalanced as I was expecting. I was expecting the creaminess to follow through with no fruit and no acidity. This is not the case, it is certainly very creamy with butter and vanilla notes at the fore but we have some nice citrus flavours with a good level of acidity. Unfortunately, for my tastes, there is just too much oak. Is it a bad wine? No. If you are in the mood for something over the top I reckon you would probably quite enjoy it, it is incredibly rich but not as one dimensional as the nose suggests. Would I recommend it? Kind of. At 10,000w it is cheap enough to be a throw away purchase that at least gives some very definite flavour. I won't be buying it again though. The SO might.....

To the second wine....

Laroche Viognier, once again a Viognier once again a Vins de Pays d'Oc. You can see where my tastes are at the moment? Interesting, good value whites is where I am at. This is exactly that and I will reiterate that this is the best value wine I have found to date in Korea.

It is a much lighter lemon in the glass, an indication of limited, if any, exposure to oak.
The nose is just lovely. A fresh lemon beginning quickly backed up by the most delicious peach you have ever smelled. Like walking through a French market in summer. There are other soft stone fruits there as well, notably apricot. It wasn't quite as aromatic as the last viognier, not really having many of the floral elements but what it did have was pineapple. Not just any old pineapple though. Pineapple cubes, from your local sweet shop. I liked that!

The palate is fairly straightforward, decent acidity, peach and lemon with an apricot kernel finish. Length was decent, and it is a refreshing drink, not a massive full-bodied viognier. A really good, clean, simple, soft wine at 12,000w then. We have already been back to buy more. I suggest you get over to the Kyobo store at Jamsil now and get a bottle. I would be amazed if you didn't like it.
Also, I want people to try Les Vins for buying wine, the staff are great, the selection is good. It is still clearly my favourite wine shop in Seoul.

When picking up the second bottle of Laroche I also got a 2001 Haut-Bages from Pauillac. Eagle eyed readers will know I have already had the 2004 and it was far from ready for drinking. Let's hope 3 years bottle age is sufficient!

Drinking in Korea

2007-06-29T11:25:00.001+09:00

Warning, this post may be a little unfair.

I am, currently, a little dispirited(pun intended) with the state of drinking in Korea. As I stated last post it is very much a story of liquids to make you drunk. Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for getting drunk. Dylan Thomas, Oliver Reed, Jeffrey Bernard, Noah, Homer Simpson. Drunks are great company. When you are drunk. You can't be a student of wine without appreciating the effects of alcohol, something many wine writers seem to glaze over, but there is a caveat. That is, there should at least be some pleasure, real sensual pleasure, in the consumption of the alcohol. Not solely in the pleasure of a temporary suicide(thanks Bertrand Russell).

Drinking in Korea is all about getting wasted. I understand(for understand read: am aware of) the cultural nuances behind the drinking culture. I understand why Soju is so popular in the same way that I understand why white ciders are so popular in the UK. Money counts. I understand why Koreans want to drink beers that are brewed in Korea by Koreans. What I don't understand is why it is all so bad. Surely, with the economic growth in Korea, with the raising of living standards, with Sparkling Korea there could be a market for Soju that is not just made through dilution by mixing pure ethanol with water and flavoring. Surely there could be a market for a beer that tastes of something other than chemicals. A true quality spirits industry? Good quality wines, red and white at reasonable prices in every city. A country that has such an important cultural role for drinking should surely have a market for drinks above the industrial? Arirang TV each day has artisans of Korea making dresses, musical instruments, hats......Where are the artisan brewers? The artisan distillers?

I will admit that I am no expert on traditional Korean drinks, but what I see and have tasted that is available in most supermarkets does not instill much confidence. I think about Korea's neighbours, Japan, with their wonderful Sake, Whisky and beer producers and I wonder why can I not see this here. Why are people drinking Soju out of juice cartons with straws? Why was I drinking a beer last night with added fibre(produced by Hite....Called S......Added fibre......S.Hite indeed!)?

Drinking is a pleasure of the senses. Korea seems to offer only senseless drinking.

I tell you what though, the above post is most likely the result of too much S.Hite last night. I'll be revelling in the Korean drinks industry later tonight!

Two wines to report on this weekend. A big, oaky Chardonnay from South Africa and a very surprising Vins de Pays d'OC Viognier.

A Weeks Drinking

2007-06-24T10:32:00.000+09:00

Moulin De Gassac, Vin de Pays de l'Herault(Pictured)
2004, France 15,000W. Enoteca, Galleria Department Store

Chateau Puech-Haut, Saint-Drezery, Rose
2004, France, 29,000W. Enoteca, Galleria

Morande, Terrarum, Chardonnay
Cassablanca Valley, Chile, 2004. 25,000W Hanam-si wine shop.

3 bottles to report on then, though I won't be going into great detail as I took notes for none of these bottles. It's been a tough week!

The first 2 are both from the Languedoc in the south of France, both come under the more localised appelations than Vins de Pays d'Oc. The white is de l'Herault the pink, Coteaux du Languedoc.
Both were very pleasant little wines.
The Gassac was a Sauvignon Blanc from old vines(Vielles Vignes), the older the vine the lower the crop the better the wine. So, I was hoping this would be great. It was good. A crisp, clean, understated Sauvignon with a touch of minerality. It is on offer at 15,000w and offers a nice contrast to the big, brash, New Zealand SBs. Much more subtle but perhaps a little too subdued to be a memorable wine.

The rose was a hot day purchase. Why I think a rose is going to be refreshing on a hot day I don't know. I am seduced by the pink I guess. It is a lovely salmon pink as well. It really is appealing in the glass. The nose is nice and fruity and ever so slightly confected, there is almost a candied cherry character to it. On the palate it is a tale of sour cherries with some of the confection coming through. Interestingly I served it too cold and it really opened up as it warmed up in the glass. Not bad then but perhaps a little expensive for what you get.

The final wine was a reward for a stressful Friday. It is a nice ripe Chardonnay. Melon, yes, fat juicy melon, on the nose and a nice creamy mouth feel. A little citrus, plenty of tropical fruit and some well integrated oak, there is just a touch of vanilla. This can probably be found much cheaper in Seoul and if so is well worth picking up.

There you go, short and sweet. 3 bottles that might be worth your time. Roast beef for dinner today so I hope to pick up an Argentinian Malbec. We will see.

I have been reading one of my many Wine and Spirit publications today and it has really brought home to me the dire state of the drinks industry here. From the beer through the the spirits it is a tale of mass produced, foul tasting, drunk making beverages. I will admit to being ignorant of the more traditional spirits however(something I would love to remedy). If I can find the time and energy a close look at the drinks business here might be in order.

On the up.

2007-06-17T12:58:00.000+09:00

I was determined to have a good day yesterday. Despite staying out much too late on Friday drinking the shocking draught beer I made it to Apgujeong to meet the SO. We headed straight to the Enoteca wine shop, located downstairs in the East building of Galleria department store. It is a nice store, airy and spacious with a well presented wine selection. As you might expect the focus is on high end French wine, Galleria is a store for the moneyed Koreans, but there are also a selection of monthly wines reduced to some reasonable prices. Pouilly Fumes reduced to 24,000w are pretty appealing. Perhaps this is why they had sold out. They were doing a sparkling wine tasting which was unfortunately fully booked but we gave details so we will hopefully get to experience one of their future events.
I bought two wines from the Languedoc, a rosé from a respected producer and a Sauvignon Blanc. Two bottles, 44,000w. Not too bad. I will report on them in the week but the pink is a refreshing, fruity, sour affair that may need food...

Yesterday was far too hot to be pounding the streets so we dived into a bar called Abbey Road that is just off Rodeo Street. It is a nice bar, I have no idea what the connection to Abbey Road is but it feels a long long way from a traditional English boozer. It has a really nice garden area and lots of open inside areas, the inside outside basically. I was drinking Hoegarden myself, the wine list was average and over priced, but the SO had the house white. She said it was revolting. Near the end of her glass I decided to have a sniff. It was corked. We agreed that she really needs to trust her nose more. She assumed it was just a bad wine whereas in reality it was spoiled. The corked wine is the one that has appeared at the top right of the blog. So, at least it looked nice.

We decided to hunt down some food but happened upon Once in a Blue Moon, a Jazz bar. I am not a big jazz fan but we had read a lot about this place and it sounded interesting. It's a pretty nice place, dark, comfortable with a stylish 1920's interior. It feels a long way from the more traditional Korean bars. The food is expensive! So was the wine. The closest thing to good value was a Muga Reserva, which weighed in at 84,000w. A fairly hefty price tag then, but Muga is a good Rioja producer and given the price of some very average wines elsewhere on the list it did represent value of a sort. We were in the mood for white though and so plumped for a Macon Village at 55,000w. That is a mighty mark-up for a Macon, you could get some far more illustrious Burgundies for that sort of money. The wine was opened with a level of ceremony that a Macon Village is probably not worthy of. Our waitress sniffed the cork and presented it to me, I dutifully ignored it, there is absolutely nothing to be learned from the cork. It was a pleasant enough little Chardonnay. Light, slightly nutty citrus and apples. Had the length of Sheffield United's stay in the Premiership. There really isn't a lot to be said about it except that I did detect a bit of cheesiness about it. I had been drinking in the sun though, so, you know, my radar may have been a bit out. If you have the cash to spare I would definitely recommend it as a place to go though. I think drinking Champagne in there would be a pretty pleasurable experience.

Speaking of Champagne, why aren't there any Champagne bars in Apgujeong? It would make a killing. Absolute. Conspicuous consumption is Agpujeong. What says wealth better than Champagne. In fact, if there are any venture capitalists reading, get in touch. I'll make us rich. A Champagne and Oyster bar. Dark, stylish and expensive. Seriously, this time next year......

A Bad Week

2007-06-15T15:29:00.000+09:00

I wasn't drinking the above.

I have had a nasty cold for the second half of this week and I had two dreadful bottles of wine at the beginning of the week. It could be related?

The first was a white Bordeaux. I was tricked into buying it as the GS Supermarket near work had suddenly expanded their wine selection. It was Saint-Angel and I forget the name of the region in Bordeaux. I know it was an area close to Entre deux Mers and I found out after that it is an area noted for reasonably priced, reasonable wine. It had the wonderful phrase Cuvée Prestige on the label, which means absolutely nothing. Cuvée means vat. They are trying to tell us that this was a good batch. Which really doesn't bode well for their Vins Ordinaire or such like. Walking home I was calculating how much it would cost in Britain. I paid 14,000W which is roughly 7 quid so we are probably talking a 3 pound 50 wine. This is a dodgy supermarket though so I knocked off 51p. A 2.99 bottle then. You would have felt cheated of your 2 pounds.
I didn't do a tasting note as I pretty much just spat it out. It smelled of chemicals and rotting fruit. I did wonder if it was corked but there was none of the musty, damp smell you would expect. It tasted as dreadful as it smelled. Off-dry chemicals with an acrid finish. A bit like drinking flat White Lightning with some added sugar. It had been a hot day and this was exactly what I didn't need.

The second bottle was from that well known wine purveyor, 7-11. The bottle was behind the counter, much like fine wine and Champagne often is. It was 14,000W and the girl working there had clearly never seen it before. It was a Chardonnay, you don't often see varietals outside of the specialist retailers, and it was from the Vins de Pays D'Oc which can be an excellent source of cheaper, good quality wines. The nose was ok, had some nice ripe melon and green apple. It was nice and simple and fruity. It just did not convert to the palate unfortunately. It was all out of balance with, again, a real chemical quality. A shame really, to get a decent white from the local 7-11 would feel like a step forward. Especially if the price could come in at sub 10,000. This is probably as good an indication as any of where the Korean market is at right now(Probably another post for another day).

To add insult to injury I missed the Seoul Wine Market last weekend. Advertising? Website? Not that I could find. That will teach me to live out in the sticks I guess.

This weekend I will buy some good wine. I will try to stay true to buying an American wine. I hope to go to Aligote in Gangnam, which is reputed to have the biggest wine list in Korea.
I will have a good week.

Miguel Torres 'Tormenta' Viognier, 2006

2007-06-08T15:10:00.002+09:00

Miguel Torres 'Tormenta' Viognier
Chile, Central Valley, 2006
24,000W Shindong Wine in Hyundai Department Store, Cheonho.

A nice bunch of Viognier(Vee-on-nyey) grapes there. Viognier is a very fashionable grape, due to the expensive and expressive wines of Condrieu in the Rhone. As is the way in the wine business, the New World took note and started planting their own Viognier to piggy back on the popularity. A good thing certainly, Viognier is a really interesting white with great character but some plantings are certainly not wise. It needs to be fully ripe to produce its aromatic qualities and in too hot a region this leads to alcoholic blockbusters......

This wine(no picture, the bottle made it to recycling before the camera got it. It has a moody modern label though) is fairly light in intensity, a clear and bright lemon green.

The nose is fairly powerful, you get a nice head full of youthful fruit smells. Anise is taking centre stage, really dominating the other aromas. However there are some classic Viognier characteristics, ripe melon, peach and a very appealing floral element. This manifested itself in cherry lips for me(remember them?). It is a really aromatic nose and is a pretty good example of what a Viognier should smell like.

Drinking, it is dry and fairly intense and full bodied. It is a mouth full of wine for sure. The acidity is surprisingly good, Viognier can suffer from a lack of acidity but this is sufficiently mouth watering. What is really noticeable is the alcohol though, there is that tell-tale burn at the back of the throat. There is lime and apricot and the finish is almost almondy. The floral elements follow through as well fortunately with orange blossom notes. Nice flavours then. But...... The alcohol is too high. It is, for want of a better expression, kicking the shit out of the wine. It has this slightly harsh effect on the overall experience, so rather than a wonderful, soft, aromatic wine we are getting a kick in the face. With Doc Martens.

I may be exaggerating a bit. I am somewhat scarred by a South African Viognier that was 14.5% and oaked into submission. Still, I haven't seen many Viogniers here so if you are in the market for something a bit different and fancy getting drunk then this is well worth a punt.

Crab and wine...

2007-06-01T16:14:00.001+09:00

Just a quick one before the weekends drinking, I mean tasting, begins.....

Had planned to go for pork last night, boiled pork with special kimchi wrapped in lettuce(Bossam), but the place was full. So we crossed the road and went to the crab place for the first time. We had snow crab, the cheapest option and it was pretty good. The fried rice at the end that they obviously make with all the brains and other head cheese was amazing. Now, I didn't drink wine as I was a little bit scandalised by the price of the food(60,000! For both of us with beer, I am that tight), but I was pleased to see their wine selection.
Following on from the last post they were all white wines. As you would expect with something as delicately flavoured as crab and lobster. It wasn't a great selection admittedly, 1 Vins de Pays d'Oc and 2 Chilean Chardonnays. In red centric Korea it was nice to see though as I can't think of many reds that would go with crab. I wonder what wine the expert from the news article would pair with crab? Thinking about it he would probably be eating lobster. And drinking something from the Côte de Nuits. Git.

Also, my local hoff(pub) has a load of Chateau Mani in. I had a quick look and it is 10% alcohol so I am assuming it is going to be sweet. Still, I will try it out and write it up. It will be my first Korean wine!

Wine Means Red Wine......

2007-05-29T15:38:00.000+09:00

Well, Gypsy Scholar pointed me to his blog and I feel I should probably comment(though the topic is covered very well in the links). An article in the JoongAng Daily offering advice to the wine drinkers in Korea has certainly got some issues that can be addressed.

One of the issues raised is something I had intended to comment on before reading this and that is the anxiety and fear that people feel about buying wine. Walking into a wine shop can be terrifying, yet there is no good reason for this. It is not a mysterious commodity that in order to buy and enjoy requires great depth of knowledge. I do not know a great deal about MP3 players, but I know I have certain requirements and that I can talk to a salesperson about my likes and dislikes in MP3 players, I can tell them how much I want to spend and they will show me the items they stock that match those attributes. Wine is no different.

A good sommelier or retailer will be able to talk you through the wines and find you something that will match your expectations. The best part is that these people are passionate about their product and they want to share that with you. They want you to enjoy the wine they sell and hopefully introduce you to something new. I promise you that this will be the case with 90% of the people in the wine industry. It is a passion that people want to share. Take advantage of that.

My biggest issue with the article is the line "For Lee, wine means red wine. Like many connoisseurs he regards white wine as frivolous." I can only assume that this is a little artistic license from the reporter. It just seems a ludicrous thing for anyone in the wine industry to say. I mean, just ludicrous. This is a man who clearly has a passion for French wines yet he writes off Champagne, he writes off White Burgundies, Puligny Montrachet, Chassagne Montrachet, Corton Charlemagne. He writes off Coindreau, spicy Alsatian aromatics, he writes off the great whites of the Loire, Sancerre, Pouilly Fume. German Rieslings, Austrian Gruner Veltliner, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. If he really did say this then I can only assume it to be part of some misplaced machismo. That white wine is somehow feminine and therefore, in his mind, not serious. As a wine man he really is missing out on a whole lot pf pleasure though..

The other points are covered well by the Gypsy Scholar's knowledgeable friend. Balance is good. Choosing a wine at 13.5% is a daft way to choose, though I agree that avoiding some over-alcoholic wines is a good idea. I am pleased that he can afford to indulge a preference for Red Burgundies. No, really, I am.

The other point of contention is his assertion to avoid American wines. I will admit that I am guilty of this and it is something I have been meaning to address. However, each time I'm buying a bottle I always come out with something from anywhere but America. Why? Well, in the UK, under 10 pounds, you do not get that many great American wines. At least not ones I tried. They tended to suffer from the great excesses that the Europeans criticize the Americans for, massive fruity Zinfandels with enough alcohol to put you on your back with one whiff. Merlots with the structure and balance of Bambi on ice. I developed a bad impression of them. In Korea I worry that it will be the same story but I will have to pay even more for the pleasure or lack thereof. However, I will make a promise that the next time I am wine shopping I will buy at least one bottle of American wine.

So, what is the point? Well, don't be scared by wine, you buy it, you drink it and if you like it you remember it. The old world wines can be a git to get to grips with, but a little knowledge will go a long way and could prove to be extremely rewarding. Drink red and white please. Especially now it is getting hot. A cold crisp Riesling after a hard day is guaranteed to cheer you up.
This post comes directly from my place of work and it is hot and I haven't had a drink. If it is rambling there you have your excuse....

Lagunilla, Vina Artal Crianza Rioja

2007-05-27T11:58:00.000+09:00

Lagunilla, Vina Artal Crianza , 2003
Rioja, Spain
EMart, W16,000

I talked about Riojas age classifications here..
I am a big fan of Riojas, they offer some really good juicy wines and come in a great variety of styles. With the 18 months in oak for a Crianza you get that extra level of complexity and interest for your money. At W16,000 in Emart not bad value.

It is a light ruby, not an intense coloured wine and it has a slight pink rim. There is just a touch of brown to indicate its age.

On the nose we are getting many secondary aromas. This isn't the big fruity wine that was the story of the Campo Viejo. There is a real dried fruit thing going on here, raisins, prunes and spice. Cloves are really coming through. This is still fairly young though and so there is still plenty of fruit there. As is the case with most wines that are predominantly tempranillo this is a juicy red fruit affair. Red cherries and cranberries with a touch of strawberry.

This is a really soft wine tannin wise but is really quite acidic. Surprisingly so. It is not a power house by any means, it feels really quite light bodied but does linger on the palate. The dried fruit isn't really following through at all, instead we are getting the cherries and cranberries in a far less ripe style than the nose suggests. It feels a little thin and acidic for my tastes. There is at least a pleasant vanilla finish, characteristic of the time in oak, but it isn't enough to save this wine for me.

It is by no means a bad wine and if it had a little more in the way of tannins I would suggest it just needs a little more time to round out. However I don't think it will benefit all that much from age and so cannot really recommend it. My SO thinks it is pretty good though so maybe you will like it. It is not a bad price after all..

Lawsons Dry Hills Sauvignon Blanc

2007-05-25T11:29:00.000+09:00

Lawsons Dry Hills Sauvignon Blanc, 2005
Marlborough, New Zealand
E-Mart, W24,000.

Well, I have written about this in brief in other posts yet have never given it my full attention. Why? Well, it really is very good and generally it has been put away before there is any time to write it up.
Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is one of those wines that really does show off the true varietal character of a grape. It is a region that takes the grape and produces wines that seem to have all the characteristics that are noted for Sauvignon Blanc(SB). SB tends to be a gooseberry, cat piss, passion fruit, grassy, herbaceous wine. That is what you get with Marlborough SBs. Some can do more tropical fruit, some more of the grassy quality but there is usually no mistaking what it is that is in front of you.
I suspect in the UK they may soon go the way of Chardonnay, that is people becoming tired of its power house fruit and intense refreshing hit. That is the nature of fashion but unlike the welcome retreat of the over ripe, over oaked Chardonnays I think it would be a shame if Marlborough SB went out of fashion. It is a great wine.

The Lawsons is a great example of the more ripe style of the region. This is a 2005, I believe the ones I had before were 2006 and SB does benefit from being young. It is a wine all about lively fruit, not developing, secondary flavours. Indeed, the secondary flavours tend to be somewhat unpleasant tinned vegetable aromas.
This is a clear and bright lemon yellow wine of a medium intensity(I know people probably don't care too much about the appearance, this is for me and my course). The nose is great, pretty intense with no searching for the fruit required. It comes straight with the grassiness so appealing to SB and then follows up with some lovely tropical fruit aromas. Pineapple is there as is passion fruit. Gooseberry is there as well though a much riper gooseberry than some SBs. It is all backed up by a fresh citrus lemon and all in gives off a really refreshing idea of the drink to come.
And it is refreshing. Mouth watering. Crisp. An intense fruit burst with citrus taking the lead quickly followed by the fuller, riper pineapple. It has really good length with the herbaceousness and gooseberry lingering just long enough to remind you to have another slug on it(I mean, sip, of course). This is not a subtle wine, there is none of the minerality of a great Sancerre or Pouilly Fume but then to get even a decent SB from the Loire you have to pay a premium.
One of the nicest things about this wine is its price, at 24,000 that converts to about £12. Majestic Wine have this at £9.99. For once I feel that I am not getting a bottle marked up beyond belief.

If you are a fan of Marlborough SB or you have never tried them and are looking for a cracking bottle of wine at a really good price then get yourself to E-Mart. While there you could pick up one of the Lawsons Pinot's as well.

So, having debased my wine blog with talk of beer snacks we are now back on track. Coming next are a Crianza Rioja from Emart and a Viognier(Vee On Nyey) from Shindong wine.

Ultimate Beer Snack?

2007-05-20T17:04:00.001+09:00

Not a wine post. I am a bit hungover. Had to work yesterday and we felt bitter about this and so drank too much to compensate. Also it was the (extremely dull) FA Cup final.

I was thinking about beer snacks this morning. And........

What is it? The ultimate beer snack?
I reckon it has to be salty, moreish and not too filling. It is the kind of thing you have to compulsively push into your gaping maw.

Contenders?
1: Crisps(chips for our American friends). Salt and Vinegar walkers.......
Korea doesn't do Salt and Vinegar and God I miss it. They work as a beer snack. Salty, crispy and the vinegar gives enough of a hit to not be overpowered by the beer. Other flavours can work, not ready salted I reckon though(too simple), spicy ones work. Haitai Habanero would work. They are spicy as and have a bit of sweetness make them double moreish.

2: Pork scratchings. Even the name is good eh? Scratchings of pig. Salty, check. Crunchy, check. Macho, check. Pork scratchings are pretty powerful and can ruin a set of teeth but the crunchy, soft, salty and I think, unamic(I think I invented this word) snack is a genius partner to a pint of lager. I love scratchings(sorry Mam and Dad) but you can't eat a lot. One bag will do you for a session really.

3: Nuts.
Couldn't find a picture of dry roasted. It has to be dry roasted in the pub I think. The flavouring is pretty false but it has a good hit of flavour and works well with beer. 1 bag isn't enough which is a good sign as well. All nuts work well though. If you are in a better boozer you could maybe get smoked almonds and that is always going to work well.

That's the British boozer standards out of the way.

Others.....

4: Popcorn!
You pretty much get a bowl of popcorn with every beer in Korea. This is a good thing. Popcorn works. Salted popcorn. It is salty, crunchy and moreish. You can push endless piles of it into your face without really noticing it. It requires a slug of beer to remove the bits of husk stuck in your teeth. Popcorn is good. The Oriental Brewery in Jamsil has the best popcorn I have had in a pub here so far.

5: Seaweed.
Yep. Seaweed. It works. The small salty sheets are a treat. What you get is an extremely delicate, crispy vehicle for getting the all important salt in your mouth. It isn't something you get that often but when you do it is a real treat. Pretty healthy in comparison to the above as well.

6:Edamame
Ahhhh edamame. Who would have thought a soy bean could give so much pleasure? I love these. They are my ultimate beer snack. Why? Well, they come loaded with salt(when I make them), you put the pod in your mouth, tooth the bean out and get the salt with a nutty bean with bite. Then you have another. And another. I honestly think I could just keep putting these away. You don't get full. You don't grow tired. Each and every one is pleasure. Amazing. The first time I had them was in a bar in Clerkenwell and they cost £4 for about 10 pods. Stupid money. It was worth it though. If you haven't had edamame yet then go and get some.
In Seoul you can get them from the foreigners market at Hannam-dong.

So what have I missed? What is the greatest beer snack? Get stuck in!

This post was brought courtesy of Prime Max. Delicious idea.

I have been drinking wine..... We had a pretty amazing Pouilly Fume, Sauvignon Blanc at its most smoky and mineral. Very much like sucking wet stones but with alcohol. Also, we had a 2005 Haut Bages Averous. A Pauillac Bordeaux that I knew wouldn't be ready to drink and indeed wasn't. Give it a few years and it will be an impressive Pauillac though I reckon.
7-11 are now doing some dry whites also. I spotted a Chardonnay and also a Sauvignon Blanc/Chardonnay blend from Chile. The latter costs 13,000 and is a bit meh.

Old World Vs New World...... Battle of the Blends.

2007-05-01T20:12:00.000+09:00

Cape Mentelle Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon 2005
Margaret River,
W26,000

Kressmann Grande Reserve 2005
Bordeaux
W17,000

Both bought from les vins maeil located in the Lotte Castle Plaza(pictured above), Jamsil. They have a website at www.lesvins.co.kr but unfortunately it doesn't work. This is a really nice wine shop. It has issues. It has a tendency to be hugely over priced. Rather than separate its wines by just region it does them by reds/whites and regions. Most importantly it does not have a price against every wine. Or even most wines. There is very little pricing......
However, I like it. It is haphazard, wine boxes scattered about the place, wine bins overflowing, bargains scattered here and there. The staff are extremely friendly and helpful. There is none of the abject fear that seems to strike some shop workers when confronted with a white faced, big nose(I try to engage in my pidgin Korean but there is a moment of rabbit caught in headlights as I approach in most shops). It just feels like a real wine shop. A bumbling, enthusiastic, passionate wine lovers retail experience. What's not to like? Also, they gave me free cheese. As service. All good.

To the battle.....

Old World V New World.
France V Australia
The largest exporter of still light wine V the largest growth(by volume) of still light wine exports

and so on.

In all honesty this is probably unfair, though not without worth. Dry white Bordeaux has a propensity to be fairly uninteresting, dry and characterless wine. It is very firmly in the shadow of the reds and the sweet wines of the region. The reasoning behind picking up this bottle was pretty simple, it was cheap. However, knowing that it was a Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc blend gave me the opportunity for this comparison. And comparison is good!

The Bordeaux is a 50-50 split, Semillon/Sauvignon, the Cape Mentelle 49-49 with 2% Chardonnay.
Both are clear, bright lemon and very pale wines. They look young, they are young, the Bordeaux carrying just a touch of green.

On the nose the Australian wins hands down. It has characteristic Sauvignon traits, herbaceous(grassy almost), gooseberries, green apples and there is a touch of honey in there which must be coming from the Semillon. It is a really expressive nose. The Bordeaux has far less going on. There are green apples, though they smell slightly oxidised, as though they are all that's left from a fruit salad from yesterday(HA! I think that right there was the moment I moved in to horrible, over descriptive, wine bore territory. You witnessed it here! It's true though.). There is a touch of the herbaceousness, a touch, and far more nondescript citrus. It all feels a bit green to be honest.

It is a similar story on the palate. The Bordeaux is a tale of unripe fruit, green apples and lemon. It is a refreshing dry white that lacks the character to take it out of the realms of bland. I could probably argue the case for a touch of minerality but I can't really be bothered.
The Cape Mentelle is a bit of a zinger, lemon and grapefruit, far less herbaceous than the nose suggests. Although the Sauvignon dominates there is much more weight than a straight Sauvignon Blanc. It has crisp green apples as well as the citrus and all said and done offers hell of a lot more than the Bordeaux.

A surprising result? Well, no. Cheap, white Bordeaux is probably not the place to look for exciting wine and 17,000 is cheap. It probably translates to about £4 or $8 in real(not marked up beyond recognition) money. However, I quite liked the Bordeaux, when taken on its own merits. Crisp, light and refreshing I would be quite happy to drink this. The Cape Mentelle was just a good wine.

Edit: Alright, just to clarify the Australian was the superior wine. By a long shot.

Sileni 'The Plateau' Pinot Noir 2005

2007-04-29T12:33:00.000+09:00

Sileni 'The Plateau' Pinot Noir
2005
Martinborough
New Zealand
Lotte Dept Store, Myeongdong
W27,000(I think, it was reduced quite a lot)

Pinot Noir is never cheap. It is a difficult grape to grow but some argue it produces the worlds great wines. New Zealand, after its great success with Sauvignon Blanc is now carving out a solid reputation for growing Pinot. Martinborough and Central Ottago have probably the best reputation for Pinot in NZ.

I would love to be able to make this posting a comparison with great Red Burgundy. Unfortunately the prices are so prohibitive I can't. So, it will be a review solely based on its own merits.

Sileni do a great Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc for 21,000 and this is another good wine. It is a light ruby colour, it looks fruity and it smells fruity. Cherries and strawberries are really coming through and they smell juicy. Lovely, young, succulent fruit. Typical of a young Pinot.
This really follows through on the palate. It is a fruit burst with good acidity and very light and soft tannins. It is a short lived pleasure though, no lingering on the palate here. With the red fruit and refreshing acidity you have a wine of real balance that makes a lovely summery red. Slightly chilled, certainly cooler than room temperature, it is actually quite refreshing.

I think this is a great wine and a good example of how New Zealand is becoming a really great country to get fantastic varietal wines(a lot of superlatives in that sentence!). I was reading just yesterday about the exceptional Chardonnays that are coming out of NZ and will definitely be hunting some of these down.

Recommended.

Old World Vs New World later today with Bordeaux fighting it out with Australia for the Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc crown.

Sileni Pinot Noir.

2007-04-26T21:15:00.000+09:00

Quicky.....

Drinking the Sileni Pinot Noir. I like it. Thought I would do a Google to see what else was out there about it. Found this Korean blog.

Google translate offers up a well exotic account of his review. I guess that is why it is in beta.

To the point, can one of the 5 people who read in Korea offer any translation? EDIT! heh. It has just been pointed out that the previous comment looks like I am suggesting Koreans are illiterate. This is not the case. I was merely making a comment on the number of people reading this blog in Korea.
The above link looks like it could be an interesting, and proper Korean, wine blog.

Actual review of the Pinot this weekend. First impressions, refreshing, fruity and summery. Unexpected for a red.

Yalumba "Y Series" Riesling 2005

2007-04-25T14:03:00.000+09:00

Yalumba "Y Series" Riesling
2005
Barossa Valley
Australia

That picture isn't very good! Apologies. I normally take photographs of the bottles I buy but unfortunately this one got recycled before I photographed so I am borrowing from the internet.

I am becoming a bit of a Riesling fan. They seem to offer wines that can have all the interest and pleasure of a white Burgundy but at a fraction of the price. The difference, in my opinion, is the white Burgundy can often be very much a story of the wine makers skill whereas a Rieslings quality is much more an expression of the grapes origin and climate. Of course, Chardonnay and Riesling are two very different grapes and in fact Chardonnay more than any other grape reflects the terroir(as the French like to call it) so maybe I am talking rubbish.

This was bought in the Shinsegae department store next to the Express Bus Terminal. We were on a mission to buy sausages and growlers(pork pies) from Gavins sausages that the excellent zenkimchi has posted about. We looked. And looked. I was exhausted and had a cold. We looked. I had auditory hallucinations and the sweats. We looked. We didn't find any sausage.

I bought two Australian wines, the Riesling of this post and a Barossa Shiraz. The two bottles cost 40,000Won. This represents pretty good value, Barossa is one of the really noted areas for Shiraz and often they come at a pretty high price.
As it happens the Riesling is also from Barossa. It is pale in colour as you would expect for a young Riesling, a clear and bright yellow.

The nose is pretty much all about the citrus with a really fresh limey kick to it. Perhaps as close as you will get to limes in Korea?? It also has a hint of the petrol so associated with Riesling. Just a hint though.
On the palate it is again a lovely, light bodied, citrus affair that would be well suited to some grilled oily fish on the barbecue. Yalumba talk about generous length and tropical fruit in their official tasting note. I disagree with both. Length was almost non-existent, it was a fleeting pleasure and I got none of the tropical fruit flavours, only the citrus.

Still, it was a W17,000 bottle and was a real quaffer. Definitely recommended for the summer.

Oh and we emailed Gavins and they do indeed operate out of Shinsegae, the Meyong-dong one.
Pork Pies this weekend? If only I could get some Piccalilli.

Tonight is all about a New Zealand Pinot Noir and Sushi, a pairing I have been led to believe works well. We will see.

Kukje Gallery Wine Bar

2007-04-16T16:06:00.000+09:00

It was a weekend of tourist activities. We stayed in the excellent Metro hotel in Myong-dong and did visits to the palaces and temples that we have so abjectly failed to visit in the past.

I bought a couple of bottles in the wine shop in Lotte department store, a Cava and a New Zealand Pinot Noir. If there is any doubt that the Korean wine market is set to grow then the evidence was there, it was hammered with people the majority of whom seemed to be showing a real interest in the product as well as buying. Good to see.

After visiting Gyeongbokgung we had a stroll past the galleries that line the main street. It felt a lot like Notting Hill, so I pretty much hated it, but I had heard of Kukje and knew they had a wine bar. After a full day of schlepping around the city with barely a drink to break things up we felt justified in an early evening drink.

Inside is very smart, low lighting, leather seats, and a view of the mountains and the large palace wall. We were given a fairly hefty wine list which disappointingly offers no wine by the glass. There was no way that was going to deter us with the state of our feet and thirst and so we took to ordering a bottle of fizz. With Veuve at 58,000 a half bottle it was never going to be Champagne though and so I tried Cremant de Bourgogne for the first time. I had heard that it was a good low cost alternative to its more illustrious sibling.

Given the surroundings I wasn't comfortable doing a tasting note but my memory will be sufficient I am sure. It was extremely pale and had a good mousse, though the bubbles were not as fine as you would hope to get in a good quality Champagne. It was a lively, fruity wine, lots of apple. Loads of it. Like an unsweetened Appletize maybe. It was crisp with good acidity and the bubbles felt nice and smooth. I suspect that it was produced using the 'methode traditionelle', that is it goes through its second fermentation and thus acquires its fizz in the bottle we were drinking it from.

It wasn't as cheap as I would like and the snack provided was rubbish. We were presented with an attractive plate of seemingly stale bread sticks. Which looked a lot like sticks.

There were plenty of other wine bars in the area where I am sure the well to do art lovers of the world like to conspicuously consume. I may have to join them as the weather improves.

The Stump Jump 2004

2007-04-09T19:31:00.000+09:00

The Stump Jump 2004
McLaren Vale, Australia
Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Marsanne
16,000 won from Gourmet Food Emporium, Galleria, Apkujong.

Illness(a little) and laziness(a lot) have kept me from blogging.

So to a wine I had a few weeks ago now. Picked this up in Galleria, in the food hall rather than the wine shop and it was a decent price at 16,000. I thought it sounded like an interesting blend(for interesting, read potentially revolting) and figured it would be a good way to test my palate at picking up the various constituents.
It is an attractive, clear and bright lemon green colour with a fairly watery appeal to it.

On the nose I was fairly surprised to get some of the developing qualities of the Riesling, that is, a very faint petrol odour. This is a classic aroma to get from Riesling but is not something I would necessarily expect from an Australian cheapy of this age and price. Shows what I know. Primarily coming through is citrus though backed up by green apples and a pleasant wet stone effect. None of the characteristic Sauvignon Blanc herbaceousness was apparent.

On to the palate and we have a nice light summery drink here. There is a hit of lime followed by a really pleasant grapefruit freshness. The Marsanne makes itself known here with soft stone fruits, more apricot than peach, leaving a rounded feeling in the mouth. Unfortunately it was all backed up with an ever so slightly harsh green apple back bone. Overall this would be a lovely, light summer drink though.

I am drinking the Lawsons Hills Pinot Noir as I write this. A delicious New Zealand Pinot. 29,000 from E Mart. Obviously is not a cheap bottle, Pinot rarely is, but it is well worth the stretch. Soft and well balanced it is bursting with red fruits, cherries, raspberries and a little blueberry. Good stuff and their Sauvignon Blanc, 24,000, again from E Mart, is also the business.

We are getting to that time of year when light wines are what we are after so that will be the focus in the future. Saying that, I am still in the market for a good Barolo. I keep seeing them and it is as though the time has come for me to pop my Barolo cherry. Which would be an excellent pun if cherry was a major characteristic of Barolo. But it isn't.

Korean Raspberry Wine

2007-03-20T19:05:00.000+09:00

Korean Raspberry Wine, Bokbunjajoo.
Vintage, region and producer unknown.

First in a series of experiments with the local produce. A fruit wine made from raspberries and I don't know what else. I picked this up in the local 'Green Mart' for about 5000 won I think. I bought it as the bottle was quite attractive.

When you pour this the first thing you notice is how deep a red it is. No rim when you tilt the glass, this is an intense ruby red. It looks like fruit juice.
Give it a sniff and you are not presented with too much, it doesn't seem to give off much of a smell at all. What you do get is sweet raspberry (amazing eh?), sweets(candy) and floor cleaner. I am not sure where the floor cleaner came from, it reminded me of the school corridors after they had been cleaned or maybe a disinfected bathroom after a childhood illness. Not such a pleasant smell regardless.

I was really expecting this to be super sweet on the palate but if anything it was off-dry or even dry. To be sure it was fruity but not nearly the sugary mess I was expecting. That is not to say it was good however. It is fairly low in acidity and fairly high in alcohol, 15% no less, and you feel the burn at the back of the neck. It tastes, again predictably, of raspberries but unfortunately comes with a real unpleasant bitterness. It is almost as though the seeds have been crushed with the fruit during fermenting in an effort to get structure as provided by tannins in a red wine. It doesn't work and you are left with a really unpleasant aftertaste in the mouth.

I tried mixing it with Chilsun Cider, a type of lemonade, and this worked ok I suppose. It made a light fruity alco-pop although saying that it did make me feel a little bit ill after. So, on admitting what a lightweight I am we really all can look forward to the soju post.

Anyone wanting Galleria info, there are 2 nice wine shops there, 1 in the gourmet food section and one downstairs in the East section. When I have pictures I will post up or even do a mega-wine-shop-in-Seoul post. I didn't buy Champagne.

Marques De Caceres Gran Reserva Rioja 1995

2007-03-18T15:31:00.000+09:00

Marques De Caceres Gran Reserva 1995
Rioja, Spain
40,000 won, Kyobo Building Jamsil. Can't remember the name of the shop! It is in the back corner on the 1st floor. It's a nice wine shop with helpful staff and the next time I go I will take some pictures and find out the name.

So, the consolation for not picking up another Viejo crianza and a completely different wine. Same grapes, same region, different proposition altogether. Picked this up for 40,000 and the sales technique used was simple, I asked how much the Reserva was and was told 40,000 she pointed to the Gran Reserva and explained it was the same price and I was heading to the counter.

This is a deep, intense purple wine with an attractive ruby rim. On the nose it is only medium intense, giving up none of the power of the wine apparent on tasting. This is, as you might expect, a wine that is showing off its 12 years of age. The first thing to come through on the nose is a rich leather backed up with a lovely dried fruit scent. Prunes, figs and some spiciness gave up an almost Christmas pudding like smell. This is all backed up with still solid primary fruit, dark black cherries and blackberry and the light vanilla notes from the minimum 2 years in oak for a Gran Reserva Rioja.

This is a serious wine, intense, full bodied and complex. It still has fairly pronounced tannins and acidity and is still retaining its primary fruit, this could probably age for some time to come. The leather follows through with far more pronounced vanilla and dark fruit of cherry and blackberry a hint of strawberry and then dried fig and chocolate on the finish. This is a good complex wine with really good length that might benefit from more aging. Certainly it benefited from being paired with some red meat, this is not a glugger like the Viejo Crianza.

Good value at 40,000? Certainly you are getting a wine to think about and it really is a face full of flavour. On a cold, dark night with the smell of roasting meat, this was a real treat.

Gewurtzraminer 'Hugel' 2004

2007-03-17T12:10:00.000+09:00

Gewurztraminer 'Hugel' 2004
Alsace, France
39,000 won, Shinsegae Department Store

A brief hiatus from blogging, not drinking, due to getting back into the meat of the day job. Drinking was a necessity blogging a tiring prospect.

To the wine.....

Gewurtztraminer is often described as the Marmite grape, you either love it or hate it. I love it, especially from Alsace with its distinctive bottles and generally good quality wines at all price points.
'Gewurz' is German for spice, an apt name for the instantly recognisable nose of lychee, rose and in this instance pear drops. It really is a heady aroma and this one has the distinctive Turkish delight perfume which can be so unexpected in a dry white wine. As a student of wine, I am currently studying for the WSET diploma, it is the sort of wine you would love to get in a blind tasting so easy is it to recognise from nose alone.
On the palate it is dry, though it had the merest hint of residual sugar, and was relatively low in acidity. It was by no means flabby though and was really well balanced with none of the oiliness that can appear in Gewurztraminer. I really do enjoy the Alsatian Gewurztraminers and the palate of lychee, rose and here orange blossom had a surprisingly long finish, the perfume lingering pleasantly.
Very enjoyable.

At 39,000 it is not a cheap bottle and to be honest I picked it up thinking it was 30,000. Still, a nice mistake.
Shinsegae Dept store had an interesting range and I will certainly be returning.

I intend to post up soon on all the different options for wine buying in Seoul to maybe help people locate the bottle they are after. My first visit to Galleria later where I will mostly be trying to talk myself out of buying Champagne. Update tomorrow..

Campo Viejo Viura Rioja

2007-03-04T16:05:00.000+09:00

Campo Viejo Viura
Rioja 2004
14,000 from Lotte Department Store.

This was another consolation prize after the disappointment of not picking up another 17,000 Crianza in the sale(see below). Same producer, same region but this time a white Rioja made with the Viura(also know as Macabeo) grape. It can give white wines of good fruit and acidity. Unfortunately not in this instance.

On giving this a good sniff I was pleasantly surprised to get a good hit of peach. Unfortunately this was followed by an unpleasant backbone of what I eventually pinpointed as rubber and someone else more accurately described as hairspray.
On the palate there is a citrus kick of grapefruit and a subtle follow through of peach but then the chemical warfare. When really cold this was not as pronounced but the wine was lacking the fruit and body to make for an interesting drink. I didn't really like it.
At 14,000 it is an attractive buy and others may be far more forgiving of its shortcomings. Tonight it will be used for cooking. 'nuff said.

Camp Viejo Rioja

2007-03-04T15:57:00.000+09:00

Campo Viejo Crianza Rioja 2001
17000 won from Lotte Department Store Jamsil.
Was in the sale and I can't remember the pre-sale price. Quite excited by a Crianza Rioja at this price.

An admission. I rather enjoyed this wine. So much so that I decided to buy another bottle. Which meant I didn't need to do a tasting note. Unfortunately they had sold out and so now I only have memories.
This is a blend of Tempranillo, Garnacha(Grenache) and Mazuelo(Carignan) a pretty typical Rioja blend. The Mazuleo offers acidity to balance the Tempranillo.
Crianza refers to the ageing of the wine. For Rioja this means at least 12 months in oak cask. At 17,000 this represents pretty good value here in Korea, perhaps why they were all out.

Riojas can be extremely full bodied yet soft wines, this was certainly very soft but was leaning more to medium bodied. It had really soft tanins and a pretty velvety mouth feel. Nose and palate gave off the typical Tempranillo strawberry. For me, on the nose, it was very much tinned strawberries and this was no bad thing.

It was easy drinking and thanks to the soft tanins had no need for food, hence us knocking it back and hoping for another bottle. I am not sure if they will be getting more in, especially at this price, but if you do see it for less than 20,000 then I would definitely recommend grabbing a bottle.

The good news is I was so gutted about not picking up a second bottle I picked up a Gran Reserva Rioja from 1995 for 40,000. As soon as it is opened I will update. I have high hopes as 95 was apparently a good vintage.

Majuang Riesling-Kabinett

2007-03-01T13:11:00.000+09:00

Majuang Riesling Kabinett
Mosel-Saar-Ruwer 2004
About 10,000 we think. I will update as I intend to try this again, do a proper tasting note and update my thoughts. Available everywhere.

Ok, I am at 2 disadvantages here. 1, I don't know German wine so well. I will work on it but as it stands my knowledge is not great. 2, this is produced for the Korean market and so everything is in Korean.

I will do my best.

Ok, so this is a Qualitaswein Mit Pradikat, a wine with special attributes of quality wine. All the grapes have to come from a single designated quality region , in this instance Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, and a single district within that region, in this instance Bernkastel(a good district for riesling in the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer). This is a Kabinett riesling and is so the most delicate, light and crisp style. No super ripe grapes used here which is reflected in the alcohol level.

I need to taste this again. It was indeed light and crisp with nicely balanced sweetness. It has only 8.5% alcohol making it a good aperitif and a good quaffer in the summer. I will update when I have done a proper tasting note but this seems to be a widely available good value wine in Korea. Particularly given the lack of affordable whites here.

Sileni Sauvignon Blanc

2007-03-01T13:01:00.000+09:00

Sileni Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc
New Zealand 2006
23000 from Lotte Department Store, Jamsil

Beautifully bright, pale lemon-green sauvignon blanc.

Typical Marlborough SB nose, intense, fruity herbaceous kick in the face. This is a really grassy one with a more gooseberry than tropical fruit nose.

Palate again is very typical. Pretty intense, initial citrus lemon kick with rapid follow through of the nose. Grassy and tart gooseberry. This is a real mouth waterer and is the sort of wine you want to be drinking with the sun on your face, the sea near by and a plate of spankingly fresh seafood in front of you.
It is a good Marlborough SB and you don't find too many of those for this price in Korea. I prefer the Lawsons Dry Hills from E-Mart at 24000 as it has a little more ripe tropical fruit but I can seem me getting through a few of these as the weather improves.
Go buy it!

Alta Vista Chardonnay

2007-03-01T12:32:00.000+09:00

Alta Vista Premium Chardonnay 2006
Argentina, Mendoza.
Price: 19000 won
Market at bottom of a mountain in Hanam-si that sells revolting boxes of Chablis and Burgundy from California. Thank God we are protected by EU law from such attrocities in the UK. heh, get her!

Tasting note to follow. Can't remember.

Bloody Mary

2007-03-01T12:26:00.000+09:00

Sometimes life needs a Bloody Mary. I thought this was going to be spectacular. I really did. I put all my love into it and was only really lacking the celery salt. Really, it wasn't very good.
I am pretty sure it was because the tomato juice was too sweet. I will continue to experiment. I could blame the Worcestershire sauce as well I suppose, Beans meanz Heinz where as Worcestershire sauce means Lee and Perrins.
Oh well, it looks pretty.

Elderton Chardonnay

2007-03-01T12:04:00.000+09:00

Australia, Eden Valley, 2001(!!)
Price: 19000 won from the foreigners super market in Hannam-dong.

I am not sure if Hannam supermarket is the best place to buy wine. Saw a 98 Dom Perignon there for 230000!! Nearly 70,000 more than we paid for a 96 vintage from Lotte in Jamsil. But I digress.
Saw this and will always be tempted by sub 20,000 bottles. Didn't notice it was the 2001 vintage though, perhaps due to the 2 pitchers of Cass prior to shopping.

Colour could almost be described as deep intensity lemon. Is this because of age or over oaking. Difficult to say. Certainly there has been a reasonable exposure to oak here.

The nose is rather good, still has fruit with a nice primary citrus kick followed up by the much more tropical elements you might expect from an Australian chardonnay. We are talking melon and pineapple here. Whats more interesting is a lovely honey complexity that has a definite creaminess to it.

The palate gives off the real oak sensation but this is not like some of the over-oaked wines of Australia, it is really well balanced with good acidity and citrus fruit. I suspect the oak has been toasted as there is the slightly toasty popcorn butteriness and then the fruit still coming through. Pineapple and melon follow from the nose though the honey is not so pronounced. It has suprisingly good length.

I am a little surprised by this wine, I assumed it would be past its best to be honest. There is still plenty of fruit and the obvious oak and malolactic fermentation is really well balanced. I would say this is extremely good value for a white wine in Korea. I am not sure how many bottles they had left and I may well be tempted to go and pick up a few more for everyday drinking.

Santa Helena Merlot

2007-03-01T11:53:00.000+09:00

Chilean Merlot. 2006 vintage from the Central Valley.
Price is less than 10000 won from local shop. There are plenty of cheap Chilean wines out there. Whether this is directly or indirectly to do with the free trade agreement between Korea and Chile I don't know. It is good news for the consumer however you look at it though. Reasonable wine for less than Man Won(10000) can only be good news.

Ok, it isn't great. It has a nice typical merlot nose, a nice level of fruit you would expect from a young wine like this. Plum and raspberry dominate, ever so slightly jammy with the merest hint of chocolate.
On the palate it is a little rough and ready. It feels a little too thin and although the fruit follows through from the nose it is as though the ripeness has been left and it is all just a bit green.
However, at this price it is difficult to complain.

Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon

2007-03-01T11:49:00.000+09:00

Revolting. Truly not good. Is full on fruity which is ok but is almost sweet in its fruitiness. Still wouldn't be so bad were in not for the fact that it smells and tastes like vanilla essence had been added.

Price: Around 13000 won from our local shop but available widely. Have had the shiraz as well which is margianally better but still suffers from vanilla overload.