The VS Christmas Drinks Guide
The best Christmas wines, spirits and champagnes to buy from the VS cellars, as selected by Tom Harrow of Wine Chap.
Wednesday 30th November, 2011
Christmas Eve
A rich, warming Italian red is ideal for nursing around the fireplace with some cheese and nuts – try the 1974 Barbaresco from Produttori del Barbaresco. The mild conditions and clay soils of Piedmont result in the celebrated elegant, perfumed style of this wine, which brings to mind notes of cherry brandy and tobacco.
There also couldn’t be a better time to enjoy Eiswein, a special dessert wine made from frozen grapes harvested in the middle of the night during the winter months. One particular variety, ‘Christwein’, is in fact so called because the grapes are picked solely on the 24th or 25th of December. They produce a tiny amount of incredibly sweet, concentrated honeyed nectar, as demontsrated by the St Urbans-Hof 1998 Leiwener Klostergarten Eiswein from the icy slopes of the Mosel valley. Perfect with a juicy, red berry based pudding.
For Spirits, Vintage Seekers now also list a selection of fine Armagnacs, including the 1967 Sigognac Armagnac. This rich amber spirit packs in notes of toasted oak, candied citrus fruits and butterscotch.
Christmas Day
Kick off the meal in style with the 1998 Billecart-Salmon Le Clos Saint-Hilaire. This elegant golden champagne with its notes of buttery brioche and fresh peach is always a good match for seafood, making it a perfect complement to the ubiquitous smoked salmon blinis.
Then it’s on to a crisp Burgundy to accompany your starter; we suggest the 2006 Meursault 1er Cru Charmes. Its hazelnut and honeysuckle aromas introduce a fresh, minerally wine that is at its peak for drinking now.
The Mark Haisma 2009 Morey Saint Denis La Riotte will match up to a traditional roast turkey or goose for the main event thanks to its muscular, succulently fruity qualities. Pre-eminent wine critic Jancis Robinson has described it as: “Dazzling stuff […] long and crammed full of fruit” and Vintage Seekers is one of the few retailers selected to supply Mark Haisma wines, which are only made in very small quantites.
That brandy-drizzled, flaming Christmas Pudding calls for a succulent dessert wine, such as the 2007 Coteaux Du Layon Beaulieu, bursting with evocative festive flavours like orange peel, candied fruit and sweet caramel. The finale to Christmas dinner has to be a fine Port served with a wedge of mature Stilton. Founded in 1670, Warre’s was the first British Port company established in Portugal and its history is synonymous with that of Port itself. Warre’s 1997 Port is one of the brand’s most memorable vintages, full of its characteristic blackberry fruitiness and impressive length, yet displaying the more aromatic, delicate traits of cooler climate wines.
Boxing Day
For the failsafe cold meats lunch we recommend a decent claret like the Château Langoa Barton 2001 3ème Cru. This St Julien packs tobacco, cedar and blackcurrant notes into a structured, muscular Bordeaux. It’s anticipated maturity is 2008-2016, so you can enjoy a bottle or two over Christmas and lay down the remainder of the case for future celebrations.
New Year’s Eve
Known as ‘the King of Champagnes’, Dom Pérignon would be the crowning glory of any New Year’s Eve celebration – it was, after all, the Champagne of choice at the wedding reception of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles in 1981, and at a dinner given at the US Embassy in Paris for Charles de Gaulle and John F. Kennedy in 1961. Vintage Seekers offers two varieties of Dom Pérignon Œnothèque Champagne, the 1969 and 1971. These are particularly special vintages that the cellar master has ordered to be put back on the lees for twice as long as normal to allow the wine’s qualities to mature and evolve even further, until he alone decides if and when to re-release it. Only a tiny proportion of Champagne qualifies for this treatment each generation and the vintage subsequently becomes part of Dom Pérignon’s prestigious ‘wine library’. This really is the pinnacle of 20th century Champagne, so why not start as you mean to go on and begin 2012 with a sip of this?
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