In our last session in the Wine Conversation series, we decided to put a bit of focus on service. What is good service? What is bad? How to improve? When should you break the rules. We also touched on storage, decanting, the use of coravin and lastly, an interesting opening technique with port tongs.
We talked about different ways of producing sweet wines, before we got into specific iconic wines of the world. Starting of with Tokaji, the Aszu method and the Eszencia wines, we then moved to France and the fabled Sauternes. Carrying on in France, VDN (Vin Doux Naturels) were talked about before settling on Passito method. Fortification is most famously used in the production of Port, so we covered the basics of a few different styles. To cap off, we talked about other important wine styles in Madeira, Sherry, Marsala and Vin de Constance.
We started with the obvious Champagne and the Traditional method. We covered the grapes and what they bring to the blend, disgorgement and disgorgement dates and covered the levels of Dosage. We also focused on the popular Charmat method and the less known Pet-Nat (Methode Ancestrale), Continuous method and Carbonation.
With the obvious focus for the session on the extremely beautiful Slovenia, we did start with Hungary first. We explored a bit of history and went through the main regions and the grapes. We followed up with Croatia and its main regions, to finally get to Slovenia.
We started with a bit of history on Germany and arguably their most important invention, the "spatlese". We discussed their main regions, some of the most important classifications and finished off with some iconic producers. Next we tackled Austria and their infamous scandal and their resurgance. We spent some extra time on Wachau and talked about the icons.
We started with Portugal, discovering its history and its main regions. We focused on Douro, Vinho Verde and Dao. We mentioned some other important regions, and the main grape before we moved to the Americas. We talked about Brazil, including some of world's most unusual wine regions, Uruguay and its Tannat grape and finished of with Mexico, the darkhorse of the continent.
We started with a bit of Spanish history, before moving on to exploring the regions, via some of the most important estates in the country including Vega Sicilia, Pingus, Alvaro Palacios ...
We started with covering other regions of Italy and then we focused on the main part of todays session - Veneto. We covered Prosecco, Soave and Valpolicella as the 3 key regions that make Veneto one of the most important regions in Italy.
We started with a bit of detailed history about Tuscany and then moved on to understanding the Sangiovese grape. After that we decided to take a whack at the Super Tuscans and finished off with white grapes and some of the other notable appellations of Tuscany.
We started the conversation about Italy and delved into its history. Then we started with our focus on Piedmont, mostly with Barolo and Barbaresco. We did briefly discuss other important grape varieties in Piedmont and finished off with the icons.
