ABC - ANYTHING BUT CHARDONNAY

                        Chardonnay – love it or hate it!  The yuppy ladies’ ‘vino collapso’ in wine bars gave the grape variety a really bad name in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s but Chardonnay is nonetheless the grape of the finest, most superb and sublime white Burgundies.

 However there ARE other white grape varieties that produce excellent wines. These include such unusual varieties as assyrtico, obaideh, merwah, bacchus and reichensteiner. Tonight the organiser has set out to bring you some of the most interesting and the best of their class - we have the greatest wine made from the Viognier grape - Château Grillet - in a very elegant vintage for the wine and difficult to obtain now, a very rare aged Pinot Gris by Trimbach, a stunning Château Riussec Sauternes and the rare dry white wine of Château d’Yquem.

Most of our wines are unashamedly French but some others have crept in – the Wickham wine is also the house wine of the House of Commons and the organiser selected it for a British Embassy dinner in Estoniain 2010 at which it showed very well indeed.  Hatzidakis Santorini is one of the best Greek white wines and Chateau Musar white needs no introduction.  Tierhoek is a superb and unusual sweet wine made from chenin blanc grapes dried in the sun on straw mats.

Our very interesting selection of 10 wines tonight is as follows: 

2011 Wickham Special Release Fumé

2009 Santorini Assyrtico de Mylos Vieilles Vignes, Hatzidakis

 2004 La Terasse du Château, Nuits-Saint-Georges Blanc Lupé-Cholet

2004 Y Grec de Château d’Yquem

2004 Château Grillet

1998 Chateau Musar White - or possibly earlier

1996 Pinot Gris Hommage à Georgette Trimbach, Alsace

2006 Tierhoek Straw Wine, South Africa

1989 Château Rieussec

Our 10^th wine is the brand new white wine from Château Haut-Brion – 2007 Clarendelle Blanc.

Prince Robert of Luxembourg(Clarence Dillon’s great-grandson) who now runs Château Haut-Brion, launched this wine in March 2013. His aim was to produce an excellent and affordable wine from this great estate that is ready to drink now. The organiser has especially included this wine tonight so be one of the first to try it here.

If you love good white wines you’ll LOVE these. And not a Chardonnay in sight!!!

Due to the diversity of these wines and the difficulty in finding an appropriate match of food, no food will accompany the tasting.