Where are Burgundy and Bordeaux wines from? And what is a c a n e l é ?

I went to a wine tasting of French wines. We merrily debated whether wine should accompany food, or whether food should accompany wine!

The tasting was organised by a wine tasting club, which holds meetings at the back room of the Fulham Wine Rooms (restaurant, bar and wine shop) in Fulham, London, England.

We arrived to find wine glasses ready and waiting on a numbered sheet. A side plate had the sharp blue cheese to contrast and sweet small cakes to go with the wines.

The sweet wines we tasted were from Sauternes and other places in the Bordeaux region of France. Sauternes is a village in the south-west of France, in the Sauternes region. The Americans use the word sauternes with a small s to mean a sweet wine resembling wine from Sauternes.

However, the French protect the term which can be used only to describe wines from that region.

Sauternes, Barsac, and Cadillac are all in Bordeaux, which means the border on the water, or the river or seaside.

I tried eight sweet wines at a wine tasting club, which met at the Fulham Wine rooms (described in an earlier post).

My favourite sweet wines, both from The Sampler, which has branches in Islington in North London, and Wimbledon in south London. The one which was best value (the cheaper of the two), cost £10. It was Ch. Inc Hilhs Liquoreux 2011 Saint - M a c a i r e AC, a 75 cl bottle.

It tasted too sweet against a blue Roquefort cheese, better matched with the c a n e l é.

(I have inserted spaces because a spell checker changes the words after I have finished.)

C a n e l é
The French word ends with an accent on the e, an acute accent, making the e sound like an ay, with you your voice rising as if asking a question 'eh?'

This is a French tiny cake, well cooked, supposedly flavoured with rum. (I could not taste the alcohol, but it was a sweet little cake.)

(Not to be confused with the similar sounding Italian cannoli which is a cannon-shaped rolled sheet of pasta, as used around a meat or spinach filling in canneloni.)

My other equal favourite of the sweet wines, also bought from The Sampler wine shop, cost £35 and was Ch. Lamothe-Guignard 2003 2me Grand Cru Classé Sauternes AC. However, we had two bottles of this wine and both tasted different, maybe from two different barrels. One looked pinker than the other, and one was more grape-y. I had the second quality bottle, in most people's opinion, but I thought it was still great.

However, on price alone, I think the other bottle was quite good enough, and a much better price.

Best value, 5 - cinq is French for five.

Compare the wines. They look different colours.

This is the dearer of my two favourites, £35, and it was everybody's favourite.

BURGUNDY
Burgundy is diagonally north west of France, towards Germany and Geneva in Switzerland. (I use the g in Burgundy, Geneva and Germany to link the three places.)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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