Montclair Wine

[xylophone]

I notice that it is has become much easier to find a good red at a Thai restaurant in the last year or two.

Regarding temperature, I much prefer to drink red wine at room temperature. To me chilling red is decidedly uncivilized.

I had become accustomed to this hideous practice in LOS, but have been pleased recently to be offered a choice (cold vs room temp).

Occasionally however I still get offered ice (shudder).

Quote: "I much prefer to drink red wine at room temperature".

Everyone to their own of course, however room temperature, as stated before, was an indicator as to the optimum temperature that a wine should be drunk at however you can drink it at any temperature you wish, but it does have its drawbacks (I'm specifically talking about red wine here). As a rough guide if you were to drink your red wine at around 60 to 65° F, you wouldn't go far wrong, however room temperature in an un-airconditioned Thai room could well be up in the 80s which would certainly distort the taste of the wine.

What you would actually be tasting are the volatile aromas (including alcohol) which are released when red wine gets to this temperature and they in no way reflect the real taste of the wine.

As an aside, young fruity red wines are often served a little chilled and often benefit from it i.e. Beaujolais Nouveau.

I can quite understand you not wanting ice in your red wine, and I recall that being offered to me a few years ago when I was here, however haven't seen the practice of late!!

[KarenBravo]

When in doubt, I always buy a bottle of Barolo.

It's always good.

A recommendation please KB, as would love to try more Italian wines here. Thanks.

Never had a bad Barolo by picking the prettiest label..........

And may I ask what price they come in at?

Cheap Barolo in the UK can be had around £12 if I remember correctly but that was some years ago and the good stuff was closer to £20. In Thailand when I have seen it the price is a little high for me.........especially compared to the other prices quoted in this thread.

The last time I bought a bottle of Barolo was in the UK and it cost seven quid a bottle........which kinda shows you how much wine I drink.

I have none of the problems of the wine affictionado as I'm passionate about Gordon's Gin and Tonic in a tall glass with plenty of ice and a slice. I'm never disappointed as the quality is always superb.

[Postmaster]

xylophone. The 'Returns Policy' for goods in Thailand is almost non-existent. Don't even bother trying to get refunds or replacements. Throw it out and bite the bullet. That's the position with most items here.

[laislica]

When in doubt, I always buy a bottle of Barolo.

It's always good.

Never had a bad Barolo by picking the prettiest label..........

And may I ask what price they come in at?

Cheap Barolo in the UK can be had around £12 if I remember correctly but that was some years ago and the good stuff was closer to £20. In Thailand when I have seen it the price is a little high for me.........especially compared to the other prices quoted in this thread.

The last time I bought a bottle of Barolo was in the UK and it cost seven quid a bottle........which kinda shows you how much wine I drink.

I have none of the problems of the wine affictionado as I'm passionate about Gordon's Gin and Tonic in a tall glass with plenty of ice and a slice. I'm never disappointed as the quality is always superb.

Do you keep the gin in the freezer, with the glasses?

It pours like thin sewing machine oil, with the cold tonic, ice and slice Oh, orgasmic!

We had a lemon tree die on us when it was huge and full of fruit so we picked the lemons and squeezed them and filled up special freezer bags that had small compartments in them.

This eventually took the place of the slice and was wonderful.

I've only tried wine in Thailand a couple of times and both were more than disappointing.

In Posh hotels, costing more than 2,000 Baht a bottle. Undrinkable, so I've not been tempted to try again.

We live to the west of Bangkok and do hot have the convenience of Macro etc. Even the nearest Big C is about an hour away.

At the end of next week we are off to the south east of Spain.

We will step into a local bar, 50 m away from the flat and have a superb Rioja and tapas for about 100 Baht.

A couple of those and no need to cook.

To the north of the city, in a small town, there is a Bodega with Jumilla on tap. Again a lovely drink.

They also offer it in a box - 15 Litres! I suppose that it will cost about €20, 10 years ago it was €15, it's a while since I bought it.

A smooth, fruity red at 14%. The problem with it used to be that you had no idea how much you had drunk, especially if you had visitors in. Just press that little button and have a top up.....

I shall think of you all here and raise my glass to you daily, several times no doubt

Cheers, bottoms up!

[xylophone]

laislica..............I am envious of your trip to Spain. Need anyone to carry your bags!!

Have tasted the wines from Jumilla and they are soft and fruity were once available in the UK, but haven't seen them over here. Strangely enough I am not a fan of the grape variety (Monastrell in Spain, known as Mourvedre in France) in the French wines but the winemakers in Jumilla seem to have a way with it............poss because they can and do blend it.

Have a great holiday.

[Andre0720]

Wines are a bit expensive in Thailand.

Good deals are those 3 or 5 liter boxes of wine from either:

Australia

Chili.

The french wines are so regulated that the addition of sulphites are forbidden.

These wines do not travel well.

They do not taste very good.

They do not keep more than a day.

Stay away fron them, unless you happen to be in France.

[xylophone]

Wines are a bit expensive in Thailand.

Good deals are those 3 or 5 liter boxes of wine from either:

Australia

Chili.

The french wines are so regulated that the addition of sulphites are forbidden.

These wines do not travel well.

They do not taste very good.

They do not keep more than a day.

Stay away fron them, unless you happen to be in France.

Have to agree with you on a couple of things in as much as the wines are expensive in Thailand and there are great deals on 3 or 5 L boxes of wine from either Australia or Chile.

Although I have to disagree with you on a couple of other points, but then that's what these discussions are all about. As regards the French wines, well just about all winemakers, unless they are of the organic or biodynamic variety, use sulphur dioxide to kill the nasties and to stop some secondary fermentation in the cheaper wines.

The better French wines travel very well and are in wine cellars all over the world, so they travel okay if they are looked after, and of course they taste great otherwise wine collectors would not pay the money they do for them.

As regards not lasting for more than a day, many can be years/decades-old before they are drunk and are still in good shape. Once opened of course it's a different matter and it all depends on how they are kept and how long they are kept after their opening takes place.

I agree with you that the cheap French wines that still seem to be finding their way onto the shelves here can be very suspect indeed, but there again that is also the case with cheap wines from Spain, the USA and other countries, with probably the exception being Australia because it does make a very good everyday drinking/swigging wine at the lower end of the market, not to mention the great wines at the top end.

[KarenBravo]

Nowadays, I don't think you can beat South America for a good full-bodied red wine, at a very reasonable price.

[raro]

Some food for thought....

you buy a 490 Baht bottle of wine

deduct 7% VAT = 475.95

deduct 30% profit for the shop = 320.56

deduct 30% profit for importer = 224.39

deduct about 260% duties and taxes = 86.30

deduct transport in reefer container = 50.-

deduct bottle, cork, label....

as for Montclair, this Grand Cul is unfortunately the plonk of choice for many networking events. I stick with the beer they have as alternative.

[DoctorG]

Enjoying being back in Oz at the moment. Row upon row of bottles under 300 baht

[xylophone]

There has been said on the thread against French wines, and although some of it is correct, there is much misinformation. Let me state now that I was bought up in the UK and French wines were my first love, and in my day anyway, there wasn't that much choice, so French wines were the norm. The Italian wines weren’t much better, especially in the price ranges that I was able to afford back then.

Now for some generalisation because it's the only way to try to keep this short. The wines of Bordeaux had been classified in 1855 so their quality was well-known and very well controlled, there were laws called "appellation controllee" laws which were supposed to control quality and did to a certain extent, but in some areas these were lax so the wines could be very poor indeed. So again, generally, the wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Beaujolais, Champagne and the Rhone were of good quality, although as I have said previously, the blending of poor Burgundy wines with other wines to give them backbone still went on underneath these laws.

The rogue areas for France would therefore be the South of France in an area broadly defined as Languedoc which had been used to producing poor quality wines for years from "inferior" grape varieties, although this was mostly for every day drinking by many of the workers. In fairness, there were some small good producers in this area with some gaining appellation controllee status in their own right.

Unfortunately this poor wine from the south of France very often found its way into bottles and was shipped overseas because not only was it very cheap to produce, the UK could not get enough of French wine, and anyway there wasn't much in the way of alternatives apart from much cheap Italian and Spanish wine, which it has to be said, did raise their game quite markedly in the 70s.

So there you have it, with much everyday drinking French wine having a poor reputation because quality was not on the agenda, quantity was.

The change came about sometime in the 70s when other wines came on the scene and shook the French wine industry up quite markedly, especially when a wine from the USA was rated above several of the best wines that France could produce, in a tasting in Paris in 1976 (I think it was). In addition a wine from Spain (Gran Coronas?) did something similar around that time which shook the French establishment to the core. Suddenly there were new wines coming in from other places which were challenging their superiority and change was needed. At the top end, new vinification methods were trialled and installed along with some new vineyard management techniques and so on, and at the bottom end, much, much change was needed.

I remember tasting an Australian wine in London and although it was only a very cheap wine (the infamous “Kanga Rouge” at £1.60 bottle) it was head and shoulders above the everyday dross imported from France.

The reputation for poor French wines was cemented around this time (and sometime before as it happens), although wine aficionados still knew that the best French wines would always be amongst the best in the world and I don't see that changing, nor has it.

A period of great change came about because the French suddenly realised that they needed to be stricter with their laws, so they re-reinforced them; a few years earlier the French government had already issued an edict to pull out a lot of the inferior vines in the south of France and replace them with better varieties, so this was again reinforced in earnest with financial inducements to do so.

As I said in an earlier post, the founder of "Grange" went to Europe in the early 50’s to look for ways to produce a better wine in Australia, well years later there was a transfer of knowledge back from Australia to France, southern France in particular, whereby younger winemakers (mostly Australians and a few Kiwis) skilled in the techniques of producing wine in Australia flew to France to help winemakers in the south (in particular) to improve their winemaking techniques and their wines, and these were called the "Flying Winemakers" (the famous Australian winemaker Grant Burge being one of them).

Many of the French took to these people and listened to what they had to say and improved the quality of their wines quite markedly, some went about their own ways, however even given this they knew they needed to improve one way or another and by and large they did.

So without getting into writing a book, there are still poor French wines made and most of them come from the south of France, and for the record are very often as a result of companies which specialise in buying up older stock of wine from the winemaker, mixing it with a younger wine to make it barely drinkable and then selling it cheaply. Look for the vintage year on a bottle before you buy, and if it doesn't state one, then it is a blend of one or more years and is generally one to steer away from.

Having said all of that, there are still some good buys out there from the south of France which prove that the French have listened and are trying to compete on the world market with slightly better wines. Ones that can be bought here and which I can recommend are: – Rare Vineyards CabSauv/Syrah; Chateau La Bastide (a wine I personally like as I have stayed at the chateau); Chateau de la Negly (highly rated by Robert Parker); a Cote du Rhône by the famous Ogier family, selling for around 500 baht a bottle, and of course the tongue in cheek wine range called "Fat Bastard".

And for the record let me state that I am perfectly in agreement with those folk that state that there are good wines coming in from other countries like Chile and Argentina, and of course those folk who like the Australian wines, which I do, however just tried to add a bit of balance to the reputation which France earned itself by its own foolishness really.

[laislica]

laislica..............I am envious of your trip to Spain. Need anyone to carry your bags!!

Have tasted the wines from Jumilla and they are soft and fruity were once available in the UK, but haven't seen them over here. Strangely enough I am not a fan of the grape variety (Monastrell in Spain, known as Mourvedre in France) in the French wines but the winemakers in Jumilla seem to have a way with it............poss because they can and do blend it.

Have a great holiday.

Thanks, we will have a wonderful time.

My "bag carrier" is quite excited and spending quite some time to learn some Spanish, bless her.

By the way, I would like to thank you for all your input to this thread.

Your knowledge is impressive and put across in a very helpful and informative way.

(Can I see a "Guide" coming on?)

Some 35 years ago, I did some work at the Le Hague nuclear power generation plant. Our agent said that I should not go to the big supermarkets to buy wine. Instead he invited me to his home to taste a few different wines. He had them in a fridge dedicated to storing wine, all opened and in various stages of being consumed, it was what he did.

He would have a glass of something nice, chosen to go with a meal and that was that. His wife was also a great cook.

I wish I could remember the names of some of them, they were spectacular.

Something akin to tasting a single malt 20 year old for the first time, (which I only did about 3 years ago).

Well, before I returned to the UK we went to a small local supermarket which had a long "shed" along the side of the building and it was crammed with wonderful wine. He said that this was wine for the locals, not the tourists - they wouldn't appreciate it!

Fond memories.

However, since the start of the millennium (when I retired) I have been full time in Spain and I have to say that there are some very good wines available at very reasonable prices. We live in the deep south east, not really a tourist area so pretty much everything is geared for locals and I enjoy it there very much. We do have Spanish tourists but really only in August and Easter.

My location here is somewhat similar (I'm the only Farang for miles).

Our area here has no pub or other night life so it's quiet and safe compared to tourist areas like Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen etc.

We have some very nice restaurants and we make family trips there occasionally, but we only have the beer, which I have to say is not that exciting either. I miss the UK for the real ales but that's about it, no sun, too many people, cold and expensive.

I shall bookmark this page and return to catch up from time to time.

Enjoy your excellent hobby.

[laislica]

There has been said on the thread against French wines, and although some of it is correct, there is much misinformation. Let me state now that I was bought up in the UK and French wines were my first love, and in my day anyway, there wasn't that much choice, so French wines were the norm. The Italian wines weren’t much better, especially in the price ranges that I was able to afford back then.

Now for some generalisation because it's the only way to try to keep this short. The wines of Bordeaux had been classified in 1855 so their quality was well-known and very well controlled, there were laws called "appellation controllee" laws which were supposed to control quality and did to a certain extent, but in some areas these were lax so the wines could be very poor indeed. So again, generally, the wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Beaujolais, Champagne and the Rhone were of good quality, although as I have said previously, the blending of poor Burgundy wines with other wines to give them backbone still went on underneath these laws.

The rogue areas for France would therefore be the South of France in an area broadly defined as Languedoc which had been used to producing poor quality wines for years from "inferior" grape varieties, although this was mostly for every day drinking by many of the workers. In fairness, there were some small good producers in this area with some gaining appellation controllee status in their own right.

Unfortunately this poor wine from the south of France very often found its way into bottles and was shipped overseas because not only was it very cheap to produce, the UK could not get enough of French wine, and anyway there wasn't much in the way of alternatives apart from much cheap Italian and Spanish wine, which it has to be said, did raise their game quite markedly in the 70s.

So there you have it, with much everyday drinking French wine having a poor reputation because quality was not on the agenda, quantity was.

The change came about sometime in the 70s when other wines came on the scene and shook the French wine industry up quite markedly, especially when a wine from the USA was rated above several of the best wines that France could produce, in a tasting in Paris in 1976 (I think it was). In addition a wine from Spain (Gran Coronas?) did something similar around that time which shook the French establishment to the core. Suddenly there were new wines coming in from other places which were challenging their superiority and change was needed. At the top end, new vinification methods were trialled and installed along with some new vineyard management techniques and so on, and at the bottom end, much, much change was needed.

I remember tasting an Australian wine in London and although it was only a very cheap wine (the infamous “Kanga Rouge” at £1.60 bottle) it was head and shoulders above the everyday dross imported from France.

The reputation for poor French wines was cemented around this time (and sometime before as it happens), although wine aficionados still knew that the best French wines would always be amongst the best in the world and I don't see that changing, nor has it.

A period of great change came about because the French suddenly realised that they needed to be stricter with their laws, so they re-reinforced them; a few years earlier the French government had already issued an edict to pull out a lot of the inferior vines in the south of France and replace them with better varieties, so this was again reinforced in earnest with financial inducements to do so.

As I said in an earlier post, the founder of "Grange" went to Europe in the early 50’s to look for ways to produce a better wine in Australia, well years later there was a transfer of knowledge back from Australia to France, southern France in particular, whereby younger winemakers (mostly Australians and a few Kiwis) skilled in the techniques of producing wine in Australia flew to France to help winemakers in the south (in particular) to improve their winemaking techniques and their wines, and these were called the "Flying Winemakers" (the famous Australian winemaker Grant Burge being one of them).

Many of the French took to these people and listened to what they had to say and improved the quality of their wines quite markedly, some went about their own ways, however even given this they knew they needed to improve one way or another and by and large they did.

So without getting into writing a book, there are still poor French wines made and most of them come from the south of France, and for the record are very often as a result of companies which specialise in buying up older stock of wine from the winemaker, mixing it with a younger wine to make it barely drinkable and then selling it cheaply. Look for the vintage year on a bottle before you buy, and if it doesn't state one, then it is a blend of one or more years and is generally one to steer away from.

Having said all of that, there are still some good buys out there from the south of France which prove that the French have listened and are trying to compete on the world market with slightly better wines. Ones that can be bought here and which I can recommend are: – Rare Vineyards CabSauv/Syrah; Chateau La Bastide (a wine I personally like as I have stayed at the chateau); Chateau de la Negly (highly rated by Robert Parker); a Cote du Rhône by the famous Ogier family, selling for around 500 baht a bottle, and of course the tongue in cheek wine range called "Fat Bastard".

And for the record let me state that I am perfectly in agreement with those folk that state that there are good wines coming in from other countries like Chile and Argentina, and of course those folk who like the Australian wines, which I do, however just tried to add a bit of balance to the reputation which France earned itself by its own foolishness really.

Thank you, a great post.

About 10 years ago, on a Brittany Ferry going to Spain, I had a long chat about the difference in quality between French and Spanish wines. He was French but had a Spanish father.

He told me that the grape vines in France were not that great, that the French had rested on their laurels and had fallen into decline through laziness.

He went on to say that the wine industry in Spain was fairly new, they had the best vines available and the latest and best stainless steel equipment for making the wine. As was indeed also true for California, Chilie, Australia etc.

He did say that there was a big push to improve quality and to regain it's reputation but he didn't give the detail like you did.

I remember being given French table wine in Paris in 1956, it would have made a very good vinegar! It was so acidic that I was surprised they could keep it in glass bottles - having tasted it, I'd expected a gutta percha lined vessel LOL

[xylophone]

Thank you for the compliment.

True what you've said laislica................ certainly the French did get lazy, really because they didn't have much competition. Every country has its "inferior" grape varieties and indeed they usually form the basis of the "swigging wine" trade and the distillation into spirits and France did nothing to change this being shipped overseas.

I think Spain realised that it needed to change much earlier than France, indeed I used to like the older style Riojas, however many of them were too heavily oaked and as tastes became more modern, they changed the way that these wines were produced with less emphasis on the oak and more for keeping the fruit a little longer. So they were willing to change.

The change for France was a lot harder, however to their credit even the most expensive classed growths of Bordeaux did change and I remember going to the winery at Chateau Pichon Baron Longueville in Pauillac, a long established producer of one of the best Bordeaux wines and was absolutely amazed because it was like something out of a modern nuclear power station!!!

The whole operation was computer-controlled from the control room high above the stainless steel tanks, valves would automatically open and shut, temperatures were registered constantly and a small team of people were keeping an eye on this, AND it was spotlessly clean.

Contrast this with a small winemaker in Languedoc who still used square concrete tanks for fermentation and huge wooden foudres (wooden wine casks big enough to walk into) for ageing. And sorry to say it was far from spotless with the occasional rat scurrying across the place along with the local dog sniffing around and hosepipes and empty buckets around the place.

Would have loved to have seen your face at that restaurant in Paris when you were served the bottle of "vinegar"!!!

Enjoy your posts, so please keep them up even whilst you are away.

[timber]

Have not had any problems with the wine. It is a cheap wine that is acceptable to have a glass in

the evening or with my noodles. Do not have the money or background to require finer wines on

an everyday basis.

[laislica]

Thank you for the compliment.

True what you've said laislica................ certainly the French did get lazy, really because they didn't have much competition. Every country has its "inferior" grape varieties and indeed they usually form the basis of the "swigging wine" trade and the distillation into spirits and France did nothing to change this being shipped overseas.

I think Spain realised that it needed to change much earlier than France, indeed I used to like the older style Riojas, however many of them were too heavily oaked and as tastes became more modern, they changed the way that these wines were produced with less emphasis on the oak and more for keeping the fruit a little longer. So they were willing to change.

The change for France was a lot harder, however to their credit even the most expensive classed growths of Bordeaux did change and I remember going to the winery at Chateau Pichon Baron Longueville in Pauillac, a long established producer of one of the best Bordeaux wines and was absolutely amazed because it was like something out of a modern nuclear power station!!!

The whole operation was computer-controlled from the control room high above the stainless steel tanks, valves would automatically open and shut, temperatures were registered constantly and a small team of people were keeping an eye on this, AND it was spotlessly clean.

Contrast this with a small winemaker in Languedoc who still used square concrete tanks for fermentation and huge wooden foudres (wooden wine casks big enough to walk into) for ageing. And sorry to say it was far from spotless with the occasional rat scurrying across the place along with the local dog sniffing around and hosepipes and empty buckets around the place.

Would have loved to have seen your face at that restaurant in Paris when you were served the bottle of "vinegar"!!!

Enjoy your posts, so please keep them up even whilst you are away.

I have to confess that I was only a sprog and it was my first encounter with wine.

It was such a powerful encounter that I avoided wine for many years.

I was with a school party on an "educational" visit tp Paris for a week, we travelled by train too.

We were initially staying in a youth hostel in Montmartre, the food (and drink) were included and were awful.

We were woken at 5:30 by the ladies in the street. They spread large cloths on the pavement and emptied the dustbins into them. Then they took anything of value or could be recycled, wine corks too.

Of course they made a lot of noise as they did this.

after a couple of days we were relocated to a cheap hotel in La Chapelle. The money returned from the youth hostel didn't cover the bill so they took all our spending money to fund it!

A miserable holiday. At one point we managed to put our feet in La Seine and were then able to tell the folks at home that we had been insane, oh the joys of being 13.....!

Through that visit I learned why the English, historically, don't like the French or them us!!

In the 90's I rode a motorbike through France to Germany and into Switzerland.

I wondered where the people were, mile after mile of sunflowers or sweet corn, until I realised that their roads usually by-pass the towns and villages.

On that visit, I learned why the "Green Euro" was so important to the French and why there are so many agricultural subsidies.....

I enjoyed visiting the champagne caves at Reims, it was all very interesting.

(Now, I prefer Calva of course)

[xylophone]

Nice post...............Hmmm, not sure that I would have liked the taste of wine at age 13 either!! And it would be quite feasible that the wine you had would have been the everyday "vin de table" with some water added because that's what they did to enable youngsters to drink wine and get used to it, without getting them tipsy.

As for me, I still like the Champagne proper, although again the Spanish Cava has come a long way since the old days.

[jocko]

There has been said on the thread against French wines, and although some of it is correct, there is much misinformation. Let me state now that I was bought up in the UK and French wines were my first love, and in my day anyway, there wasn't that much choice, so French wines were the norm. The Italian wines weren’t much better, especially in the price ranges that I was able to afford back then.

Now for some generalisation because it's the only way to try to keep this short. The wines of Bordeaux had been classified in 1855 so their quality was well-known and very well controlled, there were laws called "appellation controllee" laws which were supposed to control quality and did to a certain extent, but in some areas these were lax so the wines could be very poor indeed. So again, generally, the wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Beaujolais, Champagne and the Rhone were of good quality, although as I have said previously, the blending of poor Burgundy wines with other wines to give them backbone still went on underneath these laws.

The rogue areas for France would therefore be the South of France in an area broadly defined as Languedoc which had been used to producing poor quality wines for years from "inferior" grape varieties, although this was mostly for every day drinking by many of the workers. In fairness, there were some small good producers in this area with some gaining appellation controllee status in their own right.

Unfortunately this poor wine from the south of France very often found its way into bottles and was shipped overseas because not only was it very cheap to produce, the UK could not get enough of French wine, and anyway there wasn't much in the way of alternatives apart from much cheap Italian and Spanish wine, which it has to be said, did raise their game quite markedly in the 70s.

So there you have it, with much everyday drinking French wine having a poor reputation because quality was not on the agenda, quantity was.

The change came about sometime in the 70s when other wines came on the scene and shook the French wine industry up quite markedly, especially when a wine from the USA was rated above several of the best wines that France could produce, in a tasting in Paris in 1976 (I think it was). In addition a wine from Spain (Gran Coronas?) did something similar around that time which shook the French establishment to the core. Suddenly there were new wines coming in from other places which were challenging their superiority and change was needed. At the top end, new vinification methods were trialled and installed along with some new vineyard management techniques and so on, and at the bottom end, much, much change was needed.

I remember tasting an Australian wine in London and although it was only a very cheap wine (the infamous “Kanga Rouge” at £1.60 bottle) it was head and shoulders above the everyday dross imported from France.

The reputation for poor French wines was cemented around this time (and sometime before as it happens), although wine aficionados still knew that the best French wines would always be amongst the best in the world and I don't see that changing, nor has it.

A period of great change came about because the French suddenly realised that they needed to be stricter with their laws, so they re-reinforced them; a few years earlier the French government had already issued an edict to pull out a lot of the inferior vines in the south of France and replace them with better varieties, so this was again reinforced in earnest with financial inducements to do so.

As I said in an earlier post, the founder of "Grange" went to Europe in the early 50’s to look for ways to produce a better wine in Australia, well years later there was a transfer of knowledge back from Australia to France, southern France in particular, whereby younger winemakers (mostly Australians and a few Kiwis) skilled in the techniques of producing wine in Australia flew to France to help winemakers in the south (in particular) to improve their winemaking techniques and their wines, and these were called the "Flying Winemakers" (the famous Australian winemaker Grant Burge being one of them).

Many of the French took to these people and listened to what they had to say and improved the quality of their wines quite markedly, some went about their own ways, however even given this they knew they needed to improve one way or another and by and large they did.

So without getting into writing a book, there are still poor French wines made and most of them come from the south of France, and for the record are very often as a result of companies which specialise in buying up older stock of wine from the winemaker, mixing it with a younger wine to make it barely drinkable and then selling it cheaply. Look for the vintage year on a bottle before you buy, and if it doesn't state one, then it is a blend of one or more years and is generally one to steer away from.

Having said all of that, there are still some good buys out there from the south of France which prove that the French have listened and are trying to compete on the world market with slightly better wines. Ones that can be bought here and which I can recommend are: – Rare Vineyards CabSauv/Syrah; Chateau La Bastide (a wine I personally like as I have stayed at the chateau); Chateau de la Negly (highly rated by Robert Parker); a Cote du Rhône by the famous Ogier family, selling for around 500 baht a bottle, and of course the tongue in cheek wine range called "Fat Bastard".

And for the record let me state that I am perfectly in agreement with those folk that state that there are good wines coming in from other countries like Chile and Argentina, and of course those folk who like the Australian wines, which I do, however just tried to add a bit of balance to the reputation which France earned itself by its own foolishness really.

You made me think back to the time when young Brits wanted to get away from the beer (Men) and Babycham ( Ladies) and become more sophisticated and started eating in Restaurants and having dinner parties etc the drinks of choice were Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau and any French wine, the cheaper the better.

No wonder the French sold us what they would'nt drink themselves it all tasted like vinegar to me but i persevered .

[jocko]

The documentary i mentioned in my earlier post was called

Chateau Chunder it was on BBC 4 its well worth a google search.

[hansgruber]

Great wine for 520 baht a bottle, straight out of the fridge at villa.

Best savblanc I've found at a third of what I was paying for monkey bay.

[laislica]

The documentary i mentioned in my earlier post was called

Chateau Chunder it was on BBC 4 its well worth a google search.

Excellent, thank you.

For the lazy:-

BTW, I did like your comment about Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau, fair took me back.

Could we mention Coffee Bars too?

[KarenBravo]

BTW, I did like your comment about Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau, fair took me back.

Could we mention Coffee Bars too?

Don't forget Mateus Rose and Black Tower......very 70's.

[jocko]

The documentary i mentioned in my earlier post was called

Chateau Chunder it was on BBC 4 its well worth a google search.

Excellent, thank you.

For the lazy:-

BTW, I did like your comment about Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau, fair took me back.

Could we mention Coffee Bars too?

And later Wine Bars

[jocko]

BTW, I did like your comment about Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau, fair took me back.

Could we mention Coffee Bars too?

Don't forget Mateus Rose and Black Tower......very 70's.

Or as my mate used to say Mature Rosie.

Now that's class

[xylophone]

Great wine for 520 baht a bottle, straight out of the fridge at villa.

Best savblanc I've found at a third of what I was paying for monkey bay.

Good old Kiwi Sauv/Blanc, probably the best in the world!!

Nowhere else does the wine produced from this grape taste like this, although other copies are coming along.

[xylophone]

The documentary i mentioned in my earlier post was called

Chateau Chunder it was on BBC 4 its well worth a google search.

Excellent, thank you.

For the lazy:-

BTW, I did like your comment about Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau, fair took me back.

Could we mention Coffee Bars too?

Would love to see the full doco but can't find it anywhere to download.................any IT whizzes out there can give me a hand??

[TaoNow]

Although OP's topic was Montclair, most of the posts seem to be about getting it on with the least amount of baht.

I recommend that you localize and try the white (lightning) offerings at your local shop or 7-11 -- a few baht per bottle, those.

And report back...

[xylophone]

True the OP's heading was about Montclair wine, however he opened his post out to include many other varieties, and wine being the wide-ranging and far-reaching subject that it is, then it is no surprise that the thread has "blossomed".

IMO there have been some good posts about wine experiences and wine available here and a few posters have suggested it is turned into something like a wine club............ I think the term GRAPEVINE was used at one time.

I'm not aware of something called "white lightning" here which is available at the 7-11 stores or similar, because the only white lightning I have tasted was 180 proof alcohol distilled in the Sahara desert!!

Perhaps you would be so kind as to give us the "low down" on it, grapes used, alcohol content etc so that we can all be a little wiser with what is available here in Thailand.

[jocko]

The documentary i mentioned in my earlier post was called

Chateau Chunder it was on BBC 4 its well worth a google search.

Excellent, thank you.

For the lazy:-

BTW, I did like your comment about Liebfrumilch (Blue Nun) and Beaujolais Nouveau, fair took me back.

Could we mention Coffee Bars too?

Would love to see the full doco but can't find it anywhere to download.................any IT whizzes out there can give me a hand??

I looked here(UK) on the net and cant find any free downloads but you can buy it here.

[xylophone]

WINE FEEDBACK: Last night I tasted the "Rare Vineyards" wine I have been raving on about here and here is some feedback. This latest batch is vintage 2012, whereas the vintage I particularly liked was 2011, and I have to say that IMO 2012 is not quite up to the previous vintage standards with regards to body, flavour and nose. Having said that, I am on some pretty powerful drugs at the moment for bad sinusitis and they have affected the taste and smell of things, so I may be overreacting?

Another wine I have supported in the past is the Australian wine "The Pump" which I was able to buy for 285 baht at Supercheap, and when I first tried the 2009 vintage it was a real bargain, however since then IMO the quality has decreased quite markedly and the latest vintage 2011 I tried was disappointing for me.

Obviously we all have different tastes, however some feedback for what it's worth.