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  • Bordeaux En Primeur 2011: A Weather Review
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 27 Mar 2012 in Bordeaux Report

  • En route to Bordeaux, I am reading the weather reports from various sources describing the 2011 vintage. It seems to be a year where Mother Nature was mocking any foolish attempts at early predictions about the vintage. I remember the spring from exactly one year ago, when I arrived in Bordeaux to taste the 2010s for two weeks. It was the hottest spring that I remember in Bordeaux, forcing me to buy a short sleeve top while I watched the leaves in the vineyard grow daily.

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  • Making Sense of Soft & Soupy Wines
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 26 Mar 2012 in Wine

  • I came across a question recently that food and drink writer Fiona Beckett posed that intrigued me: “Why are some red wines so soft and soupy?” This was the exact question I asked myself while reviewing over 200 modestly priced (HK$250 or below) wines recently. The vast majority of the wines were broad on the palate with non-descript fruit, sometimes a bit syrupy with high alcohol and barely detectable acidity. The wines were clean and without faults, with tutti-fruity or confectionary fruit profile.

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  • Staying Vigilant About Fake Wines
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 16 Mar 2012 in Wine

  •  “Eighty percent of pre 1980 Burgundies sold at auction are fake,” says Laurent Ponsot who was recently in Hong Kong. That figure is higher than anything I could have imagined and came as a shock to me when Ponsot mentioned it matter-of-factly. “I have been on a personal crusade for the past four years,” adds Ponsot. “I need to find out who has fake Burgundies, of course mine as well as other peoples’, and who is selling them.”

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