Rosé tasting and comparison at Gourmand

The excuse for lunch this time was to taste 2 wines from Bandol (known for their Rosé..actually any excuse is good to go to Gourmand since the last time I was there was some 2 months ago, before Marc left for his year vacation to France. Also, I've been enjoying a lot of Domaine Tempier Bandol lately (thanks to Noel) and was curious to try another one.

The Rosés we tasted were: 2007 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé and the 2007 Domaines Ott Château Romassan Rosé Coeur de Grain. The first one courtesy of Noel and the 2nd one, care of Jojo who purchased the bottle on a recent trip to Japan. Both were practically the same in color but as others, I found the Domaine Tempier a bit more complex, serious wine compared to Domaines Ott. As Rene mentioned, Domaines Ott is they type you can drink a lot of in the beach or for casual drinking, while the Domaine Tempier is a more serious rosé, one you can pair with food and more serious drinking.

For starters with the rosés, we had an order each of Escargots Bourguignonne. As Keiichi said, this paring is magical. I don't know if this a regional pairing, but definitely is a perfect match for me. I will be ordering more of this soon.

For the main, we all had the same: Beef Onglet with Caramelized Onions and Frites. I read about this dish from the many times Noel posted it in his blog and was curious to try it. Served rare, it is a bit gamey and paired perfectly with a robust 2004 Flor de Pingus, which was given to me by a friend during my last trip to Spain.

Flor de Pingus is the 'second' label or more like a second brand of the famed PINGUS, the highly rated and prohibitive wine from Ribera del Duero made by Peter Sisseck. Obviuosly quite young, this wine could do with a few more years in the bottle.

With this we also had a small dish of Chantrelles specially made by Marc, with Filo pastry. At this point, Keiichi had already started pouring his wine, another treat for us: 1994 Château Lafleur. This wine was not decanted, but it was already open when he arrived. My first swirl and smell, and you could tell this was a Bordeaux. This was a very elegant wine.

We skipped dessert and had a cheese platter, with this we had a 2002 Château Smith Haut Lafitte, Rene's bottle. This was a good wine to have with the cheese platter, and despite the youth, it was drinking already quite well. Rene was quite happy about that, since he had purchased this bottle some 2.5 years ago, the first time we started purchasing form KL Wines.

We ended the meal with a bottle of La Bella Estate Moscato Passito, a moscato I purchased on my recent trip to Italy (Barolo). A very light, slightly sweet and very easy to drink Moscato. After our usual espresso, e headed towards PWX, were we had 2 more bottles of wine. They were: 2004 WesMar Pinot Noir Hellenthal Vineyard (Sonoma Coast) and a 2006 Freeman Vineyard & Winery Akiko's Cuvée Pinot Noir (Russian River). Quite nice and easy to drink Pinot Noirs.

Thank you guys for the fun afternoon, I really enjoyed the wine, food and the company. Hope we can do this again soon.