To once and for all dispel the myth that I am in anyway xenophobic, I must praise Bergundy wine. I don't often partake these days but as we had visitors this evening I decided to. My word, it so much better than most French wines and worth paying that bit extra for.

I don't see how supping some foreign wine would help dispel your xenophobia, real or unreal.
So that bit is irrelevant to the post.

On with the discussion about Bergundy wine and its merits then......and wines in general.
I am not an expert in regional wines, I tend to look for the grape.
I like Shiraz.
I would be a non-drinker of wine if the only wine was white, it's much inferior to red IMHO. Just a matter of personal taste before the white wine fans get defending it. Unless there is an albino Shiraz out there, who knows?

Cue the wine experts..........

This evening's was a Pinot Noir.

Red gives me a fuzzy/sore head.

White doesn't.

Years of experience in that statement.

Can someone help me? What actually is Bergundy?

Before you say JFGI, I already have, but nothing comes up.

Think I'll just have a glass of Burgundy while I wait

This is a trap right?

It's the increased congeners in red that give you the headaches, or so they say.


Anyway, just what volume do you consume at a sitting?
That too has a bearing.



Irrespective of that, the differential still remains, so your point remains.

Just watching someone drink wine can give me a headache, actually drinking the stuff can induce a mild migraine in me, if I partook of a whole bottle I think my brain would explode.

Evil stuff.

You'll be in your local park, on that soapbox, bawling about the good old days of prohibition shortly.

Will you wear the sash ?

I'm looking for a tambourine player, its got ribbons on and everything.

Here's your backing group.

And that was supposed to put men off the drink?

Imagine having a menage a trois with bottom left and bottom right?

You'd have to be off your fooking face.

It would take more than Viagra!

I'd rather do Dally's pair of insane daughters!

Is that Harold Wilson on the left at the bottom?

Good shout.

Personally, I prefer a Syrah-Grenache from Languedoc-Roussillon, on the other side of the country. The rosés from that region are very enjoyable too.

For white wine, a good Riesling – there are some very nice ones from Dr Loosen.

He also does a very good prune juice.

I'm more concerned about that poor wine glass having to circumnavigate that chest of yours.

There are good Burgundies and there are overpriced and very ordinary Burgundies.
Better value is found along the Rhone, IMHO.

Too many good wines to mention but Argentinian Malbec is great to drink, full bodied but not too much tannin.
Margaux and St Emillion are good wines.

Never a great white wine lover but Spatlese is nice ( might be a bit sweet for some).


Castillo Peralada from Near Barcelona is a great white

Spätlese is not a variety, it's a German sub-classification within QmP and relates to when the grapes are picked.
Whilst less common than whites, there are red Spätlese wines too.
Sweetness is often a characteristic as the grape juice is more intense but many Spätlese are fermented through to dryness (look for the word Trocken (dry) or Halbtrocken (half-dry) on the neck label).
German wines (I'm speaking very generally here) went through a few decades of being known for their sweetness, Trocken and Halbtrocken wines were available but the legend goes that, after 1945, US GI's who were used to glugging Coca Cola wanted a sweeter wine and so that's what the market got, hence the god-awful Liebfraumilchs and tooth-rotting Rieslings that filtered through to the British market in the suxties and seventies.
Things are way, way better now and have been for a long time now ... but many older people still avoid German wine because of the memories of Berni Inns and sweet generic blends such as Blue Nun and Black Tower, which were unrepresentative of German wine as a whole.

Choosing a wine purely because it is a Spätlese is not a great idea, it does guarantee a riper grape but is, nonetheless, only one of the many factors to take into account.

George and Weedon Grossmith couldn't have put it better.