The Oxford Wine Fair is a fabulous annual event organised by The Oxford Wine Company (link) and held in the ballroom of the Randolph Hotel.  It is a very well organised event where, for £10, you can taste more than 70 wines and about 10 bottles of other stuff (madeira, sherry, vermouth, port, and rum)!  How much you end up tasting will depend on what time you arrive (it goes for 5 hours) and how much you use the spittoons – my rule of thumb was if I didn’t like the wine, or if it was average, I spat it out.  On the other hand, if it was delicious, I drank every last drop!

Of course events like these are always great for catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.  Here I am with three friends from The Oxford Wine Company, Theo Sloot (Fine Wine), Ted Sandbach (MD), and Em:

R and S are regulars at the event and so had an established plan which I was very happy to tag along on. They go through the provided list and tick all the wines that they might like to try.  They then taste everything they want in five circuits of the room: bubbly, white wine, light red wine, heavy red wine, and dessert!  So, with glasses in hand, off we went!

The bubbly round was quickly done as there weren’t too many.  The favourite here was the gorgeous, award-winning, English 2010 Gusbourne Brut Reserve.  Dry, medium acidity, refined, grown-up, and elegant.  In other words, yum!

One of our favourite whites was on show, the 2013 Albert Bichot Viré-Clessé, but we didn’t bother tasting it as we drink it regularly.  My favourite of the whites that we did taste was a 2014 Portuguese Alvarinho (yes, that is the Portuguese spelling), from Quinta do Soalheiro.  It had good acidity and was well balanced.  The most interesting of the whites would have to be the 2014 Dr Loosen Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese.  The grapes are allowed to ripen for an extra week, giving rise to a fairly sweet wine.  It was a very well balanced wine with freshness and smoothness, well-integrated acidity, and sweetness, reminding me of a tarte tartin.

The 2010 Les Épenottes Beaune 1er cru was my favourite of the light reds.  It was a delicious pinot noir—complex, slightly earthy, slightly vegetal, and a good expression of black fruits.  Another excellent pinot noir (that we already have in the home cellar) was the 2013 Auntsfield Estate from NZ.

On the heavy red round we found lots of lively and lovely things.  It was during this round that we found (in our joint opinion) the wine of the night—the 2009 Scala Dei Cartoixa Priorat.  It was a big wine, but complex with smooth tannins and lovely black fruits.  Absolutely lovely!  Another interesting find was the 2014 The Black Craft Shiraz from Barossa Valley.  It was delicious, but what made it interesting was that it was much more like an old world restrained Rhone style than a bold new world Barossa.

As for the dessert round, the madeira and port were both absolutely delicious!  The vermouth I tried was very unusual.  It reminded me very much of a well made gin with clear flavours of botanicals like juniper coming through.  My favourite of this round though would have to be the 2012 Dulong Reserve Sauternes.  I forgot to get a picture of this one, but certainly bought some.  It was typical of Sauternes style, not overly sweet, but well balanced between sweetness and freshness.

Until next time, big bear hugs from Little Ted xx