La joie de vivre! - Wine from the Montpeyroux region

 

Salut les gars! :)

Today I am happy to introduce you a very special wine I recently found in an Alko shop in Helsinki, which I even don't get so easily in France. As a matter of fact I have never seen or found this wine in a shop in France! One of the reasons I had never heard or seen this wine is, that it is quite a special one and not easily to be purchased, except if you purchase it from the winemaker directly or their website.

So I actually found the wine by accident when I was shopping in Helsinki and was already on my way back to the bus stop and passed a very small (and well hidden) Alko Shop on my route. It must have been at least a year since I happen to walk into this small one, but nevertheless after a minute I already found the treasure (okay it was THE wine, but hey it really was and is a treasure for me to find it! ;D )

Eh ben, you might wonder what is so special about this wine, well for this a small back draft in time.... I don't remember if I mentioned it in one of my blogs before, but once in Autumn 2010, somewhere in the mountains of Pont-en-Royans at a renovated house that used to be an old farm house (but still possessing its special charm), I was introduced into a new wine I had never heard of before. It was already dark and kind chilly outside, sitting on an uneven earthen terace with some candles put onto old wine bottles to illuminate it a little bit. The chairs we were sitting on were kinda old - but fortunate, mine was still stable - and used to make noises one and then when someone of us needed to replace the bottom a bit since these were not the most comfortable chairs to sit in. Still, it is and was what makes things in France so special for me. Everything doesn't matter as long as you have good company, something to drink and some appetizers to share with and enjoy the conversations without thinking about anything else than just to enjoy the moment (maybe thats one of the reasons why I love Finland so much, cause it is so similar, but I should stick to the story). So, while sitting in these chairs and enjoying the time, a friend of my father, Marco, brought some wine up from the cellar. It was a wine called: "La Jasse Castel". He opened the bottle and leaned himself over the table to pour the wine into all the glasses that were standing on the table. Also, this table was quite old and shaked occassionally on the uneven ground when you accidentially pushed it a bit too much. Luckily, we always catched our glasses before the wine intended to swap over the glasses - yeah French people are very skilled in this particular one! - What I experienced next, I will definitely never forget! I took a sip and after a few seconds I was mind-blasted away! What an extraordinairy wine! What an excellent bouquet and a nose.....ufff..... have you ever had a wine, that had a taste of roasted meat (smell and taste) while still being smooth and not to overwhelming with this taste so that other taste notes (e.g. berries) still were present. I never had this kind of alike one before! At that time I really just enjoyed it. Also, Marco was absolutely enchanted by this wine and told that he still hadn't figured out what kind of "meat" it could be that gives the wine this special taste. Actually, I told him that it tasted like kangaroo meat, which I had in that summer in Australia tasted. Awesome, awesome, awesome or bref: "Je crois au Dieu" (Phrase for something extraordinaire great: I believe in good).

 

So maybe now you understand why I was so happy to find this wine here in Finland! :D

When checking  later the winemakers website, I just realized that I actually hadn't purchased the same wine I had in 2010. From "La Jasse Castel" four different wines happen to exist. The one I had in 2010 was called "La Jasse Castel - La Jasse". The one I found was called "La Jasse Castel - LA PIMPANELA". Nevertheless, this one is also very special and great so I did not at all regretted to purchase the whole stock from Alko (don't get me wrong, they had ONLY three bottles left of this one and told me that they haven't had reordered it or might likely do it. Well, take a wild guess, if this wine is so special and not easy to get, who would wonder about!)

Anyway so now to the feedback of the wine.

 

Name: "La Jasse Castel - LA PIMPANELA"
Origin: Coteaux Du Languedoc - Montpeyroux
Vintage: 2010
Grape(s): Grenach & Syrah (please check the winemakers website to find more about these special grapes!)
Alcohol: 14,5 %
Price: 17,90 €
Shop: Alko
Personal rank: 8.4 of 10 points (10 points = best!)

Website: http://www.jasse-castel.com/

 

Color: Dark rubin one, close to dark and deep purple

Smell: Smokey, cranberries, dark cherries. Even tho 14.5% alcohol, the smell was not covered by it! 

 

Taste: Smokey, cark cherries, very nice aftertaste

 

Development:

~ 15 mins (after opening the bottle): The taste intensity of the berries becomes stronger

~ 35 min: the wine starts to open up more. More different aromas are appearing (had trouble to define them) 

~24h : Wine has become very smooth and all the aromas are quite balanced. The tannins cover of the aromas has lessened.

Tannin(s): A lot.

Food: Lamb steak, dark meat, potatoes, cheese. I would not suggest any white meat (e.g. chicken) as the taste of the chicken would not be competitive enough for the wine. Some berries as side-dish would be a nice complementation. 

 

Résumé:

An excellent wine. I am actually lacking words here. It is definitely a wine that can be stored a couple of years. Recommend to enjoy the wine with some good company. The high alcohol content is not disturbing or a hindrance for the taste and smell. Excellenter Glycerol content (will take about Glycerol and what it is and why it is important in the next upcoming post!) Suggestion to open up this kind of special wine - if possible - 24h before consuming and in decanter. Price absolutely acceptable for Finland.
I strongly recommend to taste this wine if you can find it! :)

Aeration of the wine

Salut!
A new post about a topic that I wrote once before: Aeration of the wine. Aeration is especially important for red wines as they need more oxygen to develop the aroma. In general white wine need also some aeration, but much less than red wine. Both are quite reduced (in terms of chemistry you can say reductive) solutions. However, the red wine needs more time to take up oxygen due to its tannins and aromas development, while the white wine's taste is based upon the different compositions of "fruity acids". Ouais (french commonly used word for "yes"), some of the white wine lovers would not agree with me on this 100% or even kick my ... oh well you know what... but hei, I have never considered myself a white wine expert! Bref, lets put it down with saying the longer the white wine remains oxygenized the faster the "fruity acids" and taste will get less intensive.
Okay, after a short recapitulation about a previous post, let's continue....ou j'avais la tête....öhhh... ah ouais! 

Aeration experiment

I was actually wondering how you guys could actually try the red wine development without having any of these fancy and often hellish expensive "decanters". Well, I tried something very easy and the results was quite satisfying: All what you need is 3-4 red wine glasses and a bottle of red wine -naturellement (french: of course)-. That’s it! The first glass will be filled, let’s say ~ 30% with red wine, then all the other glass will be filled 45-50% (depends where the surface of the wine will have the maximum capacity of obtaining oxygen). Then you swirl all of the glasses for a short bit (2-3-5 seconds) and start with the first glass that only 30% contains. Smell it, taste it. Put your hand around it and wait a while to warm it up and taste, smell and swirl it occasionally and see if it changes it taste.
While you taste glass no.1 the other glasses will have some time to development their aroma. Preferably you should start with the 2nd glass 15-20 min after opening up the bottle. When you start with the 2nd, again first smelling, swirling, smelling, tasting (actually the order of what you do: smell, taste or swirling can be up to you! Try and test it out!). The 3rd glass you can taste after you finished your 2nd (or if you are a little bit faster in enjoying the 2nd glass) like after 30-45 after you open the bottle.
Believe me, you will smell and taste the difference! :D And btw would be nice if you could give me your feedback about this by a comment below! ;)

And for the new post, which I already have in mind, I have a new wine to present. I was so super happy to find this one....why? Well, be ready for my next post ;)

À bientôt mes amis!

 

Awaking of the hibernation - reviving my blog

Me at the inner wall of Osaka castle

Salut à tous! (Hey everybody). My blog is back! So what the hell happened since the last post 9 months ago? Well, well, well, actually quite a lot. Too much to tell everything in detail, but it took me a while to figure a lot of things our personally and also I had just simply too much work to do and then most of the time was feeling too much crush than to be motivated and in the mood for writing a new post. I was afraid that the quality of my post would suffer, so therefore I took a short break... and yeah it became a longer one. Now I am feeling strong, encourage, motivate ...bla bla bla (long French sentences with loads of adjectives later).... I feel like a wine that had time to rest and mature. Period.

Kiyomizu-dera temple, Kyoto

Anyway now I am back! So what happened to me?

 

The short version:

 

1) Working quite much

 

2) Visiting Japan for a conference and for holidays (a dream that came true finally after 10 years of waiting! also meet a maiko and a geiko! awesome!) :D

 

Okonominyaki - food, awesome delicious

3) Read loads of books and had loads of wine's checked out for you! (Don't worry, I used the break wisley ;) I made pics and notes, just need to put them here!)

 

4) Working voluntary (became the new President of the new founded Leo Club Helsinki/UNLIMITED and at the same time Accommodation Manager for LEF 2013) (for more info about Leos and Lions Club International, please check the internet)

 

A temple in the royal place garden, Kyoto

5) Being the bride's Best man (okay yeah still its the Maid of Honor) of my two best friends. Yeah, that was quite work as well, but something that I didn't see as work, but it took quite much time for the wedding speech (ohlàlàlà, that was so emotional to write that thing and still tried to make it funny)! :D

 

6) Started to cook more intensivly fancy food and bref too many other details!

 

So after this short update about the events from last year that have influenced me quite much back to the writing.

For you guys important to know concerning updates: I won't be able to guarantee you every week an update. If you are lucky and I have time you will get one, but I try to aim at least every two weeks to give you a new post. The posts will also become shorter, while trying to keep the quality of it high!

 

So thats it for today mes amis! À bienôt! :) ahhhh ca fait du bien d'être retourné (ah it feels good to be back!)

 

 

 

 

Tannins, polyphenolics, Yin and Yang

Hei, I have been busy again and it seems it won't get less in the near future. Anyway I am feeling much better since my last post even tho all the work. Its getting recently more and more Spring alike in Finland, which means more sun! Thats a good boost for a lot more work coming up and also encountering some more outside activities! YES!!

After I have been posting the last time always about some private stuff mixed together with some basic and advanced wine "wisdom" I think its time to go a little bit more into detail again. So today its all about tannins.

What the hell are tannins? Some of you might know what it is or from where they come from, others might just wonder cause all the time tannins is somewhere written on a bottle and so whatever. Then again other associate headache with tannins. Yeah well tannins are like a part of the Yin and Yang system of the wine. Why? To explain this I have to start from actually a very interesting question is: 'What is/are tannin/s?'

Red grapes
(c) Wikipedia; User Dragonflyir

Well the word tannin is under wine-knowing people used to describes all the polyphenolics in the wine. Okay no what are polyphenolics? Polyphenolics are a class of chemical substances that are produced by the grapes (normally much more in red than in white wines) and are a part of the plant defense/protection system. I guess you are getting no more confused. Alright lets make it easier to understand.
If you have a look onto a red grape. What do you see? Of course the red color! AHA! There you go! So polyphenolics are the red stuff in the grapes. Yes some of these polyphenolics are responsible for the color. In general the term polyphenolics in chemistry and biochemistry represents a huge and wide class of different chemical compounds (they do have some common similarities, otherwise it would be stupid to put them under all the same term, ain't?).

However you won't find polyphenolics not only the skin of the red grape, but also everywhere in the grape. Of course not all of them will give you a red color, some don't have any color, but nevertheless they contribute to the health and immune system of the plant and later also for our own health (I will come back to this in a short while).

Polyphenolics are substances that are produced by the plant in the secondary metabolism (its called like this because this metabolism is not primary necessary for the plant, but can be very very very advantageous; however it also cost the plant much more energy to produce these). Some other products of the secondary metabolism you might see in trees: Lignin is also a product of the secondary metabolism.

So polyphenolics are acting on one hand as radical scavenger. Radicals are generally produced in every organism under stress and can be harmful for the health. Therefore if you can somehow reduce these radicals its definitely good. On the other hand are working other polyphenolics like antibacterial and anti-fungal substance. Which means they either reduce the growth of harmful organisms or simply kills them (in high concentrations). A third advantage of polyphenolics is that some can absorb light (at least the one's which 'have' the color). We know all the results for having too much sun on our skin? Sunburn! So of course the plant tries also to reduce the sun influence to a certain degree. 

To summarize some traits of the polyphenolics and what they can do:
1) Act as radical scavenger

2) Act like antibacterial and anti-fungal substances

3) Act as shield against too much sun damaging effects

Coming back to tannins. I said: "Well the word tannin is under wine-knowing people used to describes all the polyphenolics in the wine". That is true but often wine people do intend to use the word tannins most of the time for the polyphenolics that are the skin of the grape! That is because tannins are highly concentrated in the skin of grapes, to protect the grape at all costs. Also these tannins will give later the wine the color and the taste. So here we come to the part about the "dark" nature of tannins. The tannins are generally know for a "bitter" taste and also causing for some people headache or even stomach problems. It is the balance and the composition of the amount of different tannins and different grapes (we just leave also reasons and occurrences during the fermentation aside for now) that results in this unbelievable dark nature of wine. 

I haven't read or heard a specific reason why some people react towards tannins with headache or even stomach problems. Even I sometimes can have troubles, that is depending on my personal feeling and stress level. So I guess as always it depends on the concentration of tannins that you uptake (okay now sounds like a medical description). On some days you are able to handle a lot and sometimes, well, less. However personally I think it also must have something to do with the receptors in our body that might react with different tannins differently (I don't have a number of how many different tannins are in nature, but believe me there are a lot. And "a lot" is not starting in hundreds).  

But we also know that tannins can have a "white" nature as well. And that is the health benefits, like radical scavenger and even more interesting immune system boosting and also helping to prevent heart-diseases. The latter part is also because of the so called polyphenolic "Resveratrol" which causes the so called "French Paradox" (that is seeing French people with quite - well formed - bellies and not suffering from heart diseases; cause they always have a glass of wine with food!!!). As we see here again you can never have just positive or negative of something. You will always have both. 

So I hope you know have much more knowledge about the tannins, polyphenolics, Yin and Yang in wine. I will now head out and enjoy the rest of the sunny day outside! Hope you do the same!
À bientôt mes amis!

PS: I most probably won't be able to post anything next week due to the fact that I will attend at the weeding of two of my best friends and also will have some guests staying Helsinki.  

Wine and "The Hunger Games"

Books!!!

M'enfin (finally!) I am back. Yeah it took like 2 weeks until I was ready to post something again. After my South Korean Co-worker Choi left I took 4 days off and had some nice Holidays. I needed some time to get my head free and also smell some fresh air after being stucked most of time in the office or at home (chores never waits....). I felt refreshed after these 4 days, however I got another bill to pay. The bill of overdoing it with my body the last weeks. So I didn't feel well and needed some more time to get back. So far I feel much better, still quite tired, however now looking forward to some Easter Holy-Days where I can rest some more. 

During the time after my 4 days of vacation I stayed most of the time (if not at work) at home and read a book. I haven't had the time to read a book or felt in any way to do so for a long time (reading so many publications at work makes you tired of seeing written pages), but after the 4 days I was trying it. I started to read "The Hunger Games". A book which is currently a major movie in the cinemas. To be honest I am not particular interested in books that get hyped up by advertisement or if people say you have to read it. I feel quite rebellious concerning books 'cause everybody has different taste (like with wines). However I must say even tho it is original a book for youngster/mid-adolescents it is really good! I read the first book in 4 days and now nearly reach the first half of the second book. I also watched the movie, which I must say didn't came close to the book, but hey its a movie and making a movie out of a book is - I guess - a very difficult thing. Anyway if you are interested in something easy and fast reading + a good story, then go for it. 

But enough of the book here, lets come back to something also very interesting: wine.
So yesterday when it started to snow again in Helsinki (we got like 20 cm of new snow the last two days) I suddenly felt like I needed something that reminds me of the summer. I picked up a foie gras du canard (its liver pâte from the duck), grabbed some fresh baked white bread and opened up a nice little bottle of Muscato d'Asti (a sweet white wine).

Bloc du foie gras du canard
(block of liver pâte from the duck)

Now here we have something new! What is a sweet wine, what is it good for and whats is a Muscadet? Uff a lot to explain and I try to make it short.
So a sweet wine is a wine that has a relatively low percentage of alcohol and a lot of remaining/rest-sugar. Why low percentage? Easy answer, because the alcohol is a product of the fermentation of the sugar of the grapes by the yeast/fungus and if you have a high rest-sugar in the wine, well then you definitely won't have too much alcohol in it. Also the higher the rest-sugar is in the wine the more toxic becomes the alcohol towards the yeast/fungus during the fermentation; so there is a limitation of the ability yeast to produce alcohol.

But how come that there is so much rest-sugar in it? Well that depends of some factors again. One is that the grapes have lost a lot of water because of some "noble rot" (Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that can infect wine grapes and cause loss of water) or that the weather conditions made the grapes skin fracturing.

Botrytis cinerea on Riesling grapes
(c) Wikipedia, owner Tom Maack

In the first case those wines are called "Auslese-Weine" (sorry only German word for this available). These wines are classified according to their alc/rest-sugar amount and also of the "kind" of berries that were used. The lowest classification is, if I am not mistaken "Beerenlese" and the highest is "Trockenbeerenauslese". Since you won't get so much juice out of grapes which have lost a lot of water already, you won't be able to produce many bottles. Vice versa this means that these bottles are not easy to get and very very expensive. In Germany you can pay between 8 - 20 € depending from which region and the producer (in Alko I saw a bottle of "Beerenlese" for 24 €, Mon Dieu! I don't wanna think of the price for the "Trocken-Beerenauslese"... ca va fait mal (translation: this is going to hurt)). Btw the classification of "Beerenlese and co." is a german one, so you won't find anything like this somewhere else. Of course other countries have different names for this, but the Germans have a lot of different sweet white wines since they are something like World Champions in White wine making. However please bear in mind that these sweet wine's are also called Dessert Wines due to their high rest-sugar. Normally you serve them together with desserts.
Just to mention here there is also something from Germany called an "Eiswein" (engl. translation: Ice wine). Because the grapes of this white wine have lost a lot of water thanks to frost and according to the rules the grapes are not allowed to be harvest before a certain day in January (I think its the 7th...not 100% sure). And obviously this one is even more rarely cause you have to gamble as a producer and hope you will get frost and a cold winter in January, so you won't gamble to high and use just some grape-vines.

But back the Sauternes and Muscadet. The Sauternes is a white wine from the "Sauternes"-region in France, and like with the "Beerenauslese" these grapes have lost a lot of water do to "noble-rot" (B. cinerea). The Muscadet on the other hand is made from grape variety 'Melon de Bourgogne'. However this wine is also sweet but if I a remember it right because the wine will "lay" on the yeast. While the yeast is disintegrated over time some compounds will get into the wine and give it special taste. These wines are a little less expensive than the others mentioned above.

Sweet white wine from
Alko Shop.

So the combination of foie gras and Muscadet is quite common in France (at least in the Southern parts) and both taste: Foie gras very fatty and Muscadet very sweet are quite well fitting to each other. However the Italian Muscato D'Asti (= Muscadet who has some carbon dioxide and sparkles) was from the taste sensation to strong personally. With all the carbon dioxide at the beginning I was not able to enjoy the foie gras. After the sparkling was gone it was very suitable to the foie gras.

Ca sera tous! (Thats all!) for today. Hope you enjoyed it! A bientôt mes amis!

Special - Last weekend....part 2

So now the 2nd part of the special....getting right to the point:

Me, smelling a special wine
and in the typical French
outfit

The special bottle. Well my dad actually gave me 2 of those, next to some others. However these 2 bottles were very special. The first one I opened up on Christmas last year and shared it with my mother. Je crois au Dieu! (French expression of something phenomenal: I blieve in God) This bottle was awesome. The first impression was overwhelming. The smell was so intensive and also so nice and not too strong, but I was having quite difficulties to taste anything in the beginning. Finally after 2h I tasted something, but also then the alcohol of the wine (14,5%) kicked in. I was having during that time my second glass and had to withdraw....withdraw....withdraw?? "What am I talking about here?" you might think. Yes I had to leave the rest of the wine in the glass and couldn't enjoy it much longer. Why? Well the wine was just too good to be true and also not ready. Okay I might have the feeling you might be now more confused or can't followed me at all. 

So what I am actually talking about? Well its somehow difficult to explain and also because you might have never encountered such kind of wine before. Nor you might face one without guidance or someone who is showing it to you. I am actually talking about a wine that is special. So special that you should buy like 12 bottles and stores it for the next decades, at least one or two decades. 

I would like to explain it to you by asking from another point of view: "What are actually the requirements for a wine that can be stored for many years, decades, if not centuries?" As simple as it might seem here the answer to this particular question it is even more difficult than to find one of these wines. The right balance. The right balance of what? The right balance of tannins, aroma compounds and alcohol percentage. I think you might get now an idea of what I am talking about. So if that is true what I keep writing here than that would actually mean the more tannins, the more aroma compounds and the more alcohol the better and longer I might can stored the bottle and let it develop itself? Yes you are absolutely right! But for only one type of wine. 

To keep now the confusing to a minimum and also the frustration. I am sorry this is a complicated question and let me remind you of one thing I mentioned in my earlier posts: Wine is a mystery and as it is also its making. So to be honest, you will never 100% know what are the ingredients for a wine that can be stored for decades. The problem of all of it is the balance and no one can describe the perfect balance of every compound in the wine to have a special wine. Every wine has different kind of grape(s) and also the percentage of different grapes might differ. Also how much sun did the vintage had? What was the weather conditions. These are just a few things which influence the outcome of the wine.

My Italian coworker checking if
I do a good decanting. Also he
smelled the wine!

Making it short from here on by asking: How do you recognize a special wine? 

1) It should have a lot of tannins - no doubt, the more the better.

2) The aroma compounds should be high and rich. 

3) The alcohol, well that is not such a crucial point. Of course if you have a decent amount you might have less "contamination" problems during the fermentation. 

4) It all depends on the balance of the 3 before mentioned points. 

5) When you open up the bottle it will take much time (at least 1-2h) until you might taste something specific.

6) The smell is overwhelming when opening up the bottle or decanting it. 

7) You buy 12 bottles of wine and taste the first now. The second in 5 years, re-evaluate it and then taste the 3rd after 10 years. You either keep trying to consume the remain one's if you realize you can't store them any longer. Or if you are lucky - you can store them even longer.

Especially point No. 7 is important. Even the most sophisticated wine sommeliers or wine taster might not be able to predict the future of a wine. They might be able to assume that a certain wine is going to be great in decades and also how long you should store it. But still, everything is up to the conditions where and how the wine is stored, if the wine maker did a good job, if nature was grateful and created a piece of outstanding quality and - actually my favor - how lucky you are! 

I hope I made it somehow a little bit more clearer to you. So lets get to the interesting point: "Which wine was I actually opening up?" Curious? Here it is:

Name: Château L'Hospitalet - La Reserve

Vintage: 2009

Region: France - Coteaux Du Langedoc

Mis en bouteille au Château

Proprietaire: Gérard Bertrand 

Grape(s): Syrah - Mourvèdre - Grenache 

Alc: 14,5 %

Shop: Unknown (was a present)

Price: Unknown

Personal rank: 9.1 of 10 points

Color: A deep Bordeaux red

Smell: Very intensive smell, overwhelming. Even while decanting it the fruity smell was - wow - impressive (normally when you decant you rarely have an intensive smell). Even tho there was a lot of alcohol (14,5%) which normally covers the smells I was able to smell cranberries, blackberries, some cherry and elderberry.  

Taste: Within the first 10-15 min no taste at all. Even after 1-2h still not the whole tasting sensation available but what I was able to taste... you have to experience it by yourself.

Tannin(s): A lot of it!

Food: - so far not possible to say, have to wait until its ready to drink (so in 10 years maybe).

Résumé: A wine made for decades. Excellent. To simply put it like me Spanish coworker said: "It's awesome! Amazing and special. You have to taste it!" Well there is nothing more to say from my side. She is absolutely right!  

That's been my last weekend. Very busy and many impression. I really enjoyed it.

Anyway I hope you enjoy reading this and going to get somehow one bottle of this wine and maybe taste it.

À bientôt mes amis!

Special - Last weekend....part 1

Salut mes amis! Finally a new post on my blog. Guys I am having at the moment a bunch of work piles on my desk and its getting not any less but just even more! Ahhhh....!!! So I am having quite a hard time to write a new post even tho I really wish to do so. Anyway ... bref let's get to the point: What happened last weekend?

The Korean dishes
(c) Choi

Well last weekend, the Friday, I was invited with some other colleges to have dinner at my boss's place. Also a college from South Korea (Choi) was invited. He was going to stay until end of next week and was going to work with my colleges and me intensively. Of course if you work so hard together you also need time to relax and build-up relations (friendship wise). Therefore my boss invited us. We all were having a great time on Friday and some wines which I was unfortunately not able to describe and making pictures of all, naturally when you are in good company you definitely won't ever do this. So well what was on the menu? 

Anselmann - 2010 - white wine
(c) Choi

Actually....I am sorry but I really don't remember the names of the dishes. On the menu were Koran dishes, made by my boss's wife, and WOW they were delicious!!!! There was Koran-made beef, fried king shrimps, fired octopus rings, kimchi/gimchi (that are vegetables which are fermented, you can have them in different taste strength, depending on how long you have fermented them. I tried the short-time as well as the long-time fermented one. Absolutely delicious, in the beginning unusual, but after the second bite, yum!), a special onion(?) soup, but also other dishes like: chicken wings and spare ribs. Pffff (French sound for a full stomach)...it was a feast for soul and body!!! If you have so much good food on the table and plus made by a really great cook (Chapeau!) you definitely need some wines along. We all had a great time and maybe one more drink too much, but anyway thats what happen sometimes and its important to enjoy these moments when they come. 

Moi and some colleges
(c) Choi

The wines we had along the dinner were different ones from white to red. There was a Trapiche  (not mentioned here before, but soon I will write about), a red wine from Argentina, with a lot of tannins but excellent for the food. Also Anselmann (will write about this one sooner or later), a white wine (Riesling = grape) from Germany. Quite dry but just perfect for the kimchi. The others I don't remember 100% anymore, but I do remember the poster so I will go and check them out in the next time. But I do remember we had 3 red and 4 white wines (we were more than 10 people).

However one of my personal highlights on this particular evening was actually what my college Choi said: That his girlfriend and he like my blog very much and started to taste and try different red wines since then! I thought great, now I am also a little bit famous in Korea! I was really happy yo hear that! Thanks Choi and at this part also a warmly welcome and hello to his girlfriend! I am happy to hear that you both enjoy reading my blog. (Okay now here must be some advertisement...so if you two have other friends in Korea who would like to try wines please let them know about my blog!.. enough advertisement). 

Coq au vin in
a Le Creuset cooking pot

During all this good food and wines of course you talk about a lot of stuff. Actually I must say I was so stunned and surprised about the fact that my boss's wife was cooking with Le Creuset cookware (http://cookware.lecreuset.com/). I do have one for myself. They are hellish expensive, but so worth the price. If you cook often and wanna have a perfect distribution of the heat and also a cookware that has a life-time! warranty than this is the cookware you were looking for! Of course its French... however you can also use it for other things than cooking, e.g. like storing in the fridge. Apart of the fact that they are hellish expensive they are also quite heavy, because they are made out of enamel iron. This point actually made me realizing why everyone has so much respect towards their granny. If they lift these pots up like feathers... well a body builder must be a piece of joke compared to them..... Anyway I am drifting apart from what I wanted to tell you. While I was so surprised I started saying that I am impressed that she has a Le Creuset and bla bla bla. Not very interesting for you guys I know but listen what happened afterwards. After some time with good food and drinks, my college and me were always mentioning how good the food is and so, my boss's wife suddenly said that I must be also a good cook... boum... thanks for the compliment. Well long story quite short I ended up promising to cook for my colleges the next Sunday (I also had promised them this a long time ago, so best time to do so). 

So after a short Friday/Saturday night and a long Saturday...OMG....I was having a "slight" hangover and cleaned-up my place and made everything ready for Sunday. I was ready to cook on Sunday.

Apple cake
(Gateau aux pommes)

Quiche de fromage

What was on the menu? Mhm very good stuff:  Coq-au vin with fried potatoes provincial style, Quiche au fromage and as dessert an apple cake! Yum-yum!

The French evening at my place

I was having very much fun while cooking and also baking, however it also toke me quite long to finish it. I had 6h until the guests arrived and a strict schedule and I made it 10 mins before they arrived! Ohlalala...I was exhausted. But it was worth. We all had a second blast on this weekend and some wine and drinks. A Chinese college brought some Chinese liqueur along, which was smelling well lets put it exotic and quite strong (53%).
However there was also another highlight on this evening. I opened up a special bottle. In France when you are having friends over and a good time, sometimes you open up something very special. Because you don't wanna drink it alone, you wanna share it friends and let them enjoy also it. So did I. I was opening a bottle which my dad has given me as a Christmas present. .....

But more tomorrow. It's getting late and I have to rest a little bit. So tomorrow I will continue.
Hope you stay with me. A demain mes amis!

- “The table has its pleasures and wine makes for a cheerful life.” Ecclesiastes 9:6 -