Back to France

Last night, my husband cooked pasta for me for dinner, which was a great treat. We decided to open the bottle on the 'champagne shelf' to go with it - Bereche et Fils Brut Reserve, which I had acquired from Green & Blue. This wine is a balanced mix of the traditional champagne grapes, chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier, but does not undergo malolactic fermentation like most champagnes.

We had high hopes for this wine, as we've drunk champagnes from this maker before. We weren't disappointed. The champagne smelled of uncooked bread dough and tasted slightly of this at the start. The finish was long and lovely - crisp, juicy grapefruit. The bubbles were teeny-tiny, but there were lots of them and they lasted. My husband commented that it was nice to "drink French again" as this champagne was such a different experience to the Italian and Spanish wines we had in the past two days - much cleaner, more balanced, yeastier, weightier. We loved it!

Bereche et Fils say on their website that this is their 'signature' champagne and I can see why. That said, I'm now keen to track down a bottle of their zero dosage Extra Brut Reserve...

Dulwich Artists' Open House

This weekend was the start of the Artists' Open House event in Dulwich, which will also run next weekend. We spent the weekend exploring our extended neighbourhood with our dog and a guidebook, popping in to see the artists that interested us. Our walking tour took us past one of our favourite local wine shops in East Dulwich, Green & Blue, so we stopped in to see what they had that was interesting. As always, their selection was different and fun, and we picked up a bottle of bubbly.

This one was the Rose d'Assemblage from Bereche et Fils, a pinot noir, pinot meunier, and chardonnay blend. While we hadn't tried this winemaker before, we were intrigued by the fact that they're an organic/biodynamic maker. We tend to like wines made in this fashion, especially since they tend to be low- or zero-dosage, which tends to increase the wine-like flavours in the champagne.

We were very excited with this wine. The huge amount of bubbles just exploded flavour into my mouth - wonderful red berries, without any sweetness or bitterness. It was very drinkable, with and without food (we trialled it with our usual grilled steak, which was a perfectly good match for the wine) and went down pretty quickly.

Green & Blue had another champagne in stock by this maker, and I'll definitely be picking it up the next time we're in that neighbourhood!