Tanglin Club Taws Wine Dinner With Bottles Bearing Artistic Labels

 The Tanglin Club offers members and guests two wine clubs which organize dinner on a regular basis. The more expensive wine club offers better, more expensive wines. 

The Affordable wine club offers wine dinners with cheaper wines at an affordable price. We have been to both.

In April 2023 the TAWS (The Affordable Wine Society) offered a buffet dinner featuring four wines from Australia's Margaret River. The Margaret River is on the west coast of Australia, you would fly into Perth as we did a couple of times.

The feature of the bottles of this wine company, Leeuwin Estate, is the labels showing different colourful works of art. Inspired, yes, you might have guessed, by the Rothschild Wine bottles.

(The Rothschild wine bottles had famous artists such as Picasso and Salvador Dali designing their labels.)

The TAWS society is run by a committee. On the evening they are aided by the knowledgeable Rose of the Tanglin Club who is studying for a qualification from WSET. I took level one. She is two levels above me, a bright jolly young woman.

Art Series bottles from Leeuwin Estate.  Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Useful Websites

https://www.tanglinclub.org.sg/

https://www.tanglinclub.org.sg/dining.html

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Visit A German Winery to Buy Wine, or from Wine Connection Bistro, Singapore, German Riesling and Portuguese Port

 I went to a wine tasting, a German and Port Wine Masterclass, at Wine Connection in Singapore, where I met Johannes Selbach who had come from Selbach-Oster in Germany to do a tour of Asia, showing his bottles of  medium dry and sweet mostly white Rieslings and Jorge Nunes from the Symington Estates showing his delectable red Ports.

Johannes in the centre with Angela on the left and another guest at the table.

The German vineyard has a wine shop you can visit and pay for a tasting of the wines. Reisling and others.

Jorge Numes of the Symington family in Portugal, with Angela Lansbury at the Reisling and port tasting at Wine Cnnection. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

The Wine Connection has premises all over Singapore selling wines and serving restaurant food with wines, as well as putting on events. I have been to Wine Connection for dinner in Hillvy2 near Hillview MRT underground railway station, but the central branch by Orchard Boulevard MRT station is different again. The Wine Connection in Tanglin Mall has huge premises, a cosy, but open on one side, indoor restaurant on the ground floor, plus a large, spacious courtyard area.

At this branch we had a choice of the wine tasting with talks by the two VIP, but casual and chatty visitors throughout the tasting and generous and attractive shared between two plates of cheese, with hot bread and butter, a little green salad with a tiny tomato each, and a teeny pot of quince jam to go with the various small dices of cheese (plus one small piece of pate. 

Later that evening there was a full dinner paired with the wines at a higher price.

When I finished off my bread I got a refill of hot bread which melted the butter. Delicious.

My water was refilled promptly from a tall metal water jug.

I also loved the wines. I am a sweet wine person. (I like Italian Prosecco, too. I am a cheap date. 

Riesling is often slightly too sour for me. Our host/visitor/expert, Johannes, (German for John) explained that Rieslings from other countries often have the distinctive petrol taste, but his wines do not. 

Getting to Tanglin Mall

Wine connection has about 13 restaurants and cheese bars all over Singapore. They have a large selection of cheeses.

Useful websites

Tanglin Mall

Orchard Boulevard MRT station

Singapore tourism

Germany tourism

Portugal tourism

Wine Connection

https://wineconnection.com.sg/

More photos and text shortly

Travel Over the Danube In The New Year's Day Concert

Problem
The New Year's Day concert from Vienna, Austria, on Austrian TV and BBC and BBC4, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, was accompanied by shots of the audience interspersed with travel views taken from the sky over Austria. I wish they had included subtitles of the places, as they had done earlier in the programme when they featured buildings in Vienna and Austria.

After the dramatic Thunder and Lightning Polka, the Blue Danube was accompanied by shots along the Danube. The videos were shot in different seasons. Where does the river go? We could identify the stripey vineyards. Looking at a map of the flow of the Danube across Northern Austria, our wine expert informed us that the vineyards would be Riesling. The Danube runs East to the Black Sea.

The best colours were autumn, orange and green fields. Next we saw snow white on the rooftops. Must be winter snow scenes, with the vines asleep in the snow.

We loved a couple of the hilltop castles with turrets, walled enclosure, inner cloisters seen from overhead. We could take a photo and then to an image search for a match and the caption revealing the location and building identity on Google images.

The Blue Danube was not blue, but mostly a murky green, olive green khaki green.Where is that?

Back in the concert hall, the programme ends, as usual, each year, with the rousing Radetsky March. The audience claps in time. The conductor signals to them to start clapping, clap louder, and stop. Afterwards, according to the commentary, members of the audience are allowed to take home flowers from the displays.

Useful websites

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Austria

Wikipedia

Tripadvisor

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

The Best Sweet Riesling From Corney & Barrow

I love sweet wines. I like muscat grapes, dessert wines, cocktails such as vodka and orange and Baileys. I enjoy Prosecco and cava and Champagne as an aperitif. Most reds are strong and dry and bore me, so I am always looking for a medium sweet, a sweet, a sparkling a pink wine.

I was in heaven when I went to a wine tasting hosted by Corney and Barrow. First the venue is a delight, and easy to find. It's a hidden gem. We walked from crowded Liverpool Street station, which has McDonalds, a Caffe Nero with no toilet, and a large Wetherspoons pub (later you can read my previous post on the station). From the busy street outside we disappeared into a pedestrian alley, into a tree lined square with a view of the Gherkin, then through lanterns bordering the stairs with heaters overhead which looked like torches, reminiscent of a Roman stage set.

In the secluded, elegant candle-lit darkness was the Corney and Barrow Restaurant. Beyond that the private room with four wines. At the start was a table of Rieslings from 2015, only a year ago, the new wines, and already Corney and Barrow are running out of their allocation.

I'd had Riesling before. I have studied about 20 hours and then a day at WSET (Wine and Spirit Eduction Trust) taking the level one exam which is roughly equivalent to an NVQ (vocational qualification for people serving wines in shops or restaurants). My husband has taken levels two and three and is studying for the diploma which consists of about nine exams taken over two years or longer. So I am forever hearing, "You can smell the petrol in Riesling".

In the Sixties and Seventies, like the rest of the British wining and dining world, I was into sweet wines and drank Mateus Rose, Black Tower, and had no idea of any regions nor any grapes.

Later, it must be the case that most of the Rieslings I have tasted in my short knowledgeable era of wine tasting have come from Alsace. I have now, thanks to Corney and Barrow, discovered the Rieslings from the Mosel region. I am told that the Mosel region consists of blue slate banks on three rivers, and the region was known by the names of the three rivers and areas, until somebody decided to simplify the name to make it more memorable. So now the region and the wine growing area are called simply Mosel.

I must have tried a dozen wines, started with the driest ending with the sweetest, and every one of them was delicious. Just to see whether I was simply in a good mood, I went over to the other three sets of wines, dry reds. Did I like all of them? No. Not one of them.

I was most interested to hear about wines grown on the side of Mount Etna. Fascinating.

However, if I had to choose a wine to drink or buy it would now be a Riesling from the Mosel.
Corner and Barrow have several restaurants and attached bars with extensive wine lists. You can also buy wine from them. They have offices in London, other parts of England, Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Singapore. You can also find them on Facebook, twitter and Instagram.
www.candbscene.co.uk is their blog.
www.corneyandbarrow.com
More about the restaurant and bar in my next post.

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

Wine Regions and Bottle Label Glossary

Glossary:
Alsace region
anything in quotes is a brand name
1er cru - higher quality (depending on region - on Bordeau it is top level but in most other regions it's below grand cru as in Burgundy
Bandol a place in south of Brance in Provence which makes rose wine, dry. French rose is dry. (Mateus from Portugal is sweet.)
Banyuls - a region
Beaune - a region of Burgundy
Beaumes de venise - an appellation, a defined geographical region with regulations about wine appellation control, meaning controlled production
beaujolais -
blanc - white
Bordeaux - region literally border of water, meaning the sea coast, South West coast and further inland region of France
Bordeaux superieur - better quality than plain Bordeaux
cabernet - grape variety - several similar sounding names such as cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon
brut - dry - used for Champagne
Champagne - region of France
chateau (castle or mansion house - under French rules if you put a picture of a castle or palatial mansion on the label that must be a real place, and the place where you wine is grown or bottled)
Chateux Neuf du Pape makes red and white wine, famous, in southern Rhone near the towns of Avignon and Orange
clos - enclosed or walled vineyard originally although nowadays the walls have fallen but the name survives
Condrieu grows Viognier grape
cote - slope (where wine grows)
coteaux - side (area)
cotes - side (area, slope)
cremant - literally creamy - similar to sparkling but with smaller bubbles made like champagne in the same way but not allowed to be called Champagne which is a region
cru bourgeois - next level up in Bordeau above Bordeau superior (above that are named regions, above those are specifically named villages such as Margaux)
cuvee - a particular wine, might have another brand name for this blend or grape
de - of
du - of the
dom. - domaine
domaine - same as domain or place in English - maker or wine estate (every chateau is a domain but not every domaine has a chateau - it could be farmland without a farmhouse)
fils - son
Jurancon - a pretty town
La - the
La tour vieille - the old tower (adjective after the noun in French)
moulleux - off dry, slightly semi sweet
mousseux -
muscat - a grape variety
muscadet - appelation controlle name of a place - particular stye of wine from a particular grape
NV non vintage  no year specified, a blend to ensure consistent quality over the variable years
pays - country
reserva - not part of quality control in France, (but it is in Spain where the terms reserve and grand reserve are for white and reds, which refers to age their rather than the quality although you would not bother to mature it for ages unless it was good quality)
Riesling - a grape variety
rose - pink
rouge - red
sec - dry
sylvaner - a white grape
superieur -
tour - tower
vin - wine
vin de pays - wine of the country of France, in the French control system, the lowest level of quality, not tied to a specific local control, can be sourced from grapes anywhere, used to be called vin de France, now just vin de pays, we would call it table wine or in French vin de table
vieux - old
vielle - old (spelled this way to match a feminine word)
fumee - smoky - gives flint in wine taste
pouilly fuisse is a white wine from south Burgundy, Chardonnay is a grape used in this region where wine is nearly always Chardonnay (unless the small amount of nasty Aligote which is mixed with Cassis to make the mixed drink Kir, named after Canon Kir who is credited with mixing local fruit juice with the nasty wine to make it more palatable - why would you buy Aligote? Because you need it as the mixer. A sweeter wine mixed with the fruit juice is horrid but a kir is wonderful.)

Riesling - celebrating one of the three most popular white grapes for wine - taste in London, England, Germany, Austria, Niagara in Canada, New Zealand and more

More posts on wines have been and will be written by me. The grape Riesling is featured in this one.

Ice wine. Even a novice can identify the sweetest wine by the slim bottle. My favourite at the exhibition. 

If you are ever on holiday or work on the borders of Canada and the USA near Niagara Falls, look for this local wine. Peller Estates. Their card says, food pairing: Pate or foie gras, blue-veined cheeses and spicy Asian cuisine. Each grape gives just one drop of juice.

If you can get to Niagara -on-the-lake in Canada, the winery has a restaurant. They can match ice wine with starters - including one with chocolate tagliatelle (pasta), main courses including glazed duck, artisanal cheeses and desserts including chocolate mousse and ice wine gelee. A heavy card brochure explains. 

If you want to plan a trip or are just an armchair traveller, go to:

wwwpellericewine.com

But if you prefer dry wine. Here are some labels.

First some entertainment for everybody. Lovely labels. Like this badger with gold. For animal lovers.

 A wine maker who wants his picture everywhere, like Alfred Hitchcock in films. For people watchers.

I'd need several drinks to dream up something as memorable as this. Man on the moon. for a nightcap.

Austrian wine. Calssic wines from the Danube valley. I can hear Strauss's Blue Danube playing in my head.  

They also produce a rose. (I'll correct this when I can find the acute accent.) The label shows a lady sitting on a diving board.

Boutique Winery Clemens Strobl. www.clemens-strobl.at

Famous wines which you may have heard of:

Greywacke of New Zealand. For more, read my next blog. Grey wacke is a rock.