Wine ChroniclesChampagne in the sky
Posted on December 27, 2017
Two value airlines for transatlantic business class
By Panos Kakaviatos for Wine-Chronicles.Com
27 December 2017
Writing articles about wines means traveling to vineyards. And my work in media relations for the Council of Europe also includes several flights a year. Each holiday season, I return to my home in Virginia to see friends and family. So here a few reflections between Christmas and New Year’s on long haul flights…
Over the past few years, I have been booking long haul flights on business class that I find for decent rates, and as one can guess, quality varies. While some people understandably prefer to spend more money on their destination locations, I prefer to have maximum comfort on the way over and back, when I can afford it and when it comes to flights that last over five hours.
In that regard, Lufthansa had always been my go-to airline, as service and quality are excellent. On my YouTube channel, I have posted several videos from business class on Lufthansa flights, both A380s and 747-800s, including an excellent journey to Hong Kong in May 2016 (only one way in business).
But that was my last long haul with Lufthansa, as prices have gone too high for business class, at least for my wallet. What cost but three years ago some €2,000 round trip from Frankfurt to Washington D.C. for example now is 50% more.
So two airlines I have come to enjoy over the past two years are Condor and Scandinavian Airlines (SAS).
Condor
For the sake of following alphabetical order, let’s start with Condor: A rather maligned airline, if you look at online reviews. Once part of Lufthansa, it was more recently purchased by the Thomas Cook Group as a recreational charter airline based in Germany. When I told a steward on Lufthansa that I planned to fly to San Diego with Condor, he said: “They have small planes,” with a certain disdain.
Indeed, I was invited to take part in the wine tasting “Critics Challenge” in San Diego in May 2017 and found out that Condor operates a non stop round trip from Frankfurt to San Diego on a 767-300 twin engine jet. Sure it is smaller than the Lufthansa A380 to Los Angeles, but it was non-stop. Read More
Krug 96 from magnum
Posted on December 24, 2017
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
24 December 2017
Did I get your attention?
Good, because that was not the only bottle that we enjoyed. Tis the season to drink well. And, well, I enjoyed myself too much, as I had left my written notes behind from a fabulous, over four hour lunch on 22 December at Black Salt, one of the best seafood restaurants in Washington D.C. … This was a great lunch with true wine loving friends. We were nine very happy people, enjoying some magnums from fine Burgundy, Champagne and from other regions, as well as regular format bottles.
My notes, only from memory, are however as usual: if in bold, I liked in particular. If red and bold even more. And when underlined, too, wine nirvana! The great DCWino – Mr. Kevin Shin – took excellent notes himself, for more assessments.
Pair of glorious magnum bottles of Champagne
Krug 96 proved to be the wine of the lunch. But the Ledru was wonderful, too!
- 1996 Krug Champagne Brut Grande Cuvée – France, Champagne
Well, I suppose this is rather perfect. Alas I left my written notes at the restaurant so here from memory. Gorgeously precise fruit driven flavors at first then a burgeoning notion of white truffle that begs fine cuisine, which we got – in spades – at Black Salt. The texture was at once velvety smooth and vivacious, the energy of the 1996 vintage shining through and although the color and even the tertiary aspects suggest a quicker than expected evolution – this was a magnum bottle! – the wine was literally singing over lunch, and we kept going back to it. Thanks be to magnums and thank be to Krug. (100 pts.)
With Amy Ray, and going back several times to this glorious magnum of vintage Champagne
Venice: not so hidden secret
Posted on December 10, 2017
Restaurant review
By Panos Kakaviatos in Venice
11 December 2017
Browsing through wine oriented Facebook posts you are bound to see boastful images of ultra expensive wines.
“Just check out the great, very expensive wines I have been drinking,” etc… Well, it is great to drink loads of great, expensive wine.
But while in Venice for the third time this year – related to my work for the Council of Europe – I took just as much pleasure in wining and dining in a somewhat hidden, brasserie style restaurant near the Realto Bridge, enjoying rather humble Lugana wine with delectable fresh fish and seafood.
Wine (and food) pretension it ain’t, but Trattoria Alla Madonna is sheer pleasure, which I had discovered already a couple of years ago, thanks to friends who – of course – live near Venice. 
Darting throughout the brightly lit restaurant to take orders and bring food to tables, the white clad waiters were constantly busy as the place was packed: a sure sign of an excellent restaurant. Indeed, Trattoria Alla Madonna does not take reservations, regularly filled as it is with both tourists and Venetians. I love the vibrant brasserie style hum: efficient service, sometimes a bit hurried, but always with a smile and courteous. Read More
Talkin bout a (wine) revolution
Posted on December 9, 2017
Book Review by Panos Kakaviatos
9 December 2017
What’s in a wine glass? These days: more than just white, red, rosé, sparkling or still. There’s also organic, biodynamic, natural, orange – and more.
Not too long ago, such terms were not part of wine parlance, but some people today, even in the wine trade, grapple with and even fret over many of these terms, which can leave enthusiastic wine consumers bewildered.
Does a “natural wine” make other wines “non-natural”? Are orange wines made from oranges? Do you have to dance to the light of the full moon to make biodynamic wine? And how different are biodynamic and organic wines from one another? And who determines them as such? Should we care?
Of course we should.
Just as food lovers pay attention to the quality of what is on their plate – Steak from an organic butcher? Carrots free of herbicides and pesticides? – why should wine lovers not seek out wines made as carefully as we want our food to be?
This is the wine revolution going on today: a reaction to overproduction and excessive yields of wine to sell as much as possible, without paying heed to quality potential, with pesticide- and herbicide-soaked vines and vineyards that in the past (and today, in many parts of the world) deaden soils and curtail the true potential of terroir-driven wines.
The revolution includes cleaner winemaking in the vat room, calls for lower uses (or no uses) of sulfur, and, if not dancing to the light of the moon, then taking into account lunar cycles in winemaking, to take but a few examples.
Skeptics and cynics – sometimes with justification – scoff at least at parts of this movement for everything “holistic” and “natural” as yet more marketing ploys to ply plonk. Of course savvy marketing behind this revolution exists… and caveat emptor always applies.
But a splendid new book – just in time for holiday wining and dining (and shopping) – finally brings readers a user-friendly approach to this revolution. Read More
Gevrey-Chambertin 2016
Posted on November 27, 2017
Looks to be quite good. Savvy buyers should seek village level wines.
By Panos Kakaviatos for wine-chronicles.com
27 November 2017
Based on a 16 November tasting of village, premiers and grands crus, 2016 appears to be darn good for Gevrey-Chambertin. Many thanks to Fabienne Nicot for the kind invitation to taste so many wines from this vintage at the Caveau Espace Chambertin, and to the vintners who offered their bottles to taste. The name of the tasting is Le Roi Chambertin.
Le Roi Chambertin: a horizontal of many village, premiers crus and grands crus from Gevrey Chambertin, vintage 2016
The vintage is remembered generally in Burgundy for its low crop – at least 20 per cent less than 2015 – and much of the blame comes from a particularly severe frost, as well as hail and mildew in some locations.
Gevrey Chambertin was not as badly affected by the frost as some other regions had been. And what made the vintage work were sunny months in July, August and September, with just a bit of rain at the right times to freshen berries that had to put up with sometimes excessive summer heat.
Due to variable frost damage earlier in the year, yields vary according to vineyard and producer, but the overall sense for Gevrey Chambertin is that of fine ripeness, with little sense of “over maturity”. The fine summer, quite hot at times, did not define the vintage as much as the heat of 2015 did, according to many tasters.
Map of Gevrey-Chambertin …
Gevrey-Chambertin in brief
As most readers know, Gevrey-Chambertin lies alongside the Route des Grands Crus at the northern end of the Côte which runs from North to South between the Combes of Lavaux at one end and Morey-Saint-Denis at the other.
For travellers coming from Dijon, Gevrey-Chambertin is where Bourgogne’s Elysian Fields begin. At the entrance to the hollowed hill of Lavaux, a château, once a property of the monks of Cluny, resembles a fortified wine-cellar. Gevrey-Chambertin, which dates back to an appellation from 1936, forms a kind of guard of honour to a set of fabulous grands crus whose crown jewels are Chambertin and Clos de Bèze. Read More
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