Pruning, performed.

I'm pooped, but I am finished with pruning (at 4.26 pm, to be exact).  Hallelujah!  It was a tough year, the rain has been incredible, this is the latest date ever that pruning has continued in Vinoland. 
I don't normally drink on Sundays, but the end of pruning always calls for a bit of a celebration.  I opened a bottle of something Vinomaker had given me on my birthday.  Another Crémant D'Alsace, the Emile Boeckel Brut Rosé is a delightful wine - right down to the simulated pink leather label (complete with faux silver stitching).  Quite pink, rather fizzy, very tasty.  Love it!
A second reason to have a glass of bubbles (as if I needed one) is that it was Mother's Day in England today, so cheers to my Vinomum.
Phew.  I'll sleep well tonight.

Last night's tipple: 2.

I love this wine.  I first tried it at a neighbour's Christmas gathering and immediately fell head over heels.  Delicate (almost ethereal), refreshing, laden with a bowl-of-red-berries-fruitiness, crisp and gracefully balanced acidity, this was the perfect wine for sipping whilst mingling and chit-chatting.  As one would imagine, I was very happy when my party-throwing neighbour recently gifted me a couple of bottles of it.
Domaine Allimant-Laugner Brut Rose NV (Crémant d'Alsace, AOC) is produced from 100% Pinot noir, is a very pale pink (I'm thinking not much skin contact) and is perilously easy to drink.  Priced well, so it falls into my cheap and cheerful category of wines, I will certainly be stocking up on this little gem.  (I find myself enjoying sparkling wines now even more than I ever have before.)  Vinomaker wasn't quite so enamoured with this wine as I was, which I am totally fine with because it means that there is more for moi.  It's a tough job, but somebody has to imbibe in this eminently appealing Alsatian wine.

An Alsatian Pinot Blanc.

It's been pretty toasty in Vinoland the past few days (103° F today), so white wine has been the accompaniment to all of our evening meals.  This Calvet, 2011 Pinot Blanc is one of the bottles of wine I brought back with me from my recent trip home.  I always try to find something different for Vinomaker to try, as I'd never find an Alsatian Pinot blanc for sale anywhere in Napa.
The thing I like most about the wines of Alsace is the labelling, it's very straightforward - in some ways even simpler than California wine labels - maker's name and grape variety, that's it!  And this was a very simple wine due to it's lack of complexity.  I do usually like Pinot blanc, in all of it's mutationally-weird-wonderfulness, but the Calvet Pinot blanc was unfortunately a tad flabby for me.  I did enjoy the extreme white-peachiness of the nose and palate, but without that extra zing of acid that I was expecting the wine just fell short of being appetising.  Bottle got emptied though.

Whines of the World.

My ears hurt!  And it's only week 4 of my class.
One would think that after tasting 17 wines, selections from the Loire Valley and the Alsace region of France, that Vinogirl would have been feeling no pain.  On the contrary.  After a couple of hours of listening to my fellow classmates bemoan the fact that the French wines we were tasting were 'thin,' 'under-ripe,' 'acidic' and ultimately 'not fruity enough', I was feeling a little battered in the hearing department.  Let me translate for the reader: what they were really saying was that the wines weren't Californian.  And there in lies a bit of a problem when one is taking a Wines of the World class.
My goodness.  I can't imagine what they'll say when the class ventures further north into Germany.
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