A satisfied customer

Great to see you both the other week. Thanks for making the trek down. Xxxx (with a lot of help from Yyyy) and I have just finished – with considerable pleasure – our tour through the very nice case of western Swiss wine that you kindly bought for us. We thought we’d give you an unscientific review of the case.

As the first customer of the day at 09.30 the wine-seller was most surprised to find a mono-linguistic Anglo man brandishing a list of Geneva and Valais’s finest wine. Having gathered the case, he did, however, compliment me on my exemplarily taste which I obviously claimed as my own and “just something I whipped-up before breakfast”.

Highlights were definitely the wonderful, honey-fuelled, white Domaine des Curiades 2007 which reminded Xxxx and me of the best of Slovenian whites

(try Sutor, Edi Simcic) which I highly recommend as they beat far more expensive French imposters hands-down; the Phillippe Darioli 2008 was also excellent and great with the sea bass we had with it.

The suitably named Domaine du Paradis 2007 is a knock-out,

full-bodied red that somehow gets better the 2nd day (yes, we managed to re-cork a bottle or two). The other fantastic red was the Domaine des Freres Phillippoz

which is very alcoholic but somehow very light, complex and spicy. A bit like a very good Shiraz.

The only bottle we thought was disappointing was the Denis Mercier 2008 which was pretty forgettable. There was also one bottle that they didn’t have (forget which one) so I replaced it with an excellent champagne that you must try – Jose Michel –

which at 34 CHF in Geneva is about the same as a bottle of Evian at the Kempinski. It was an excellent substitute and – in our collective view – hands down beat Pommery, Veuve and Moet (not that we drink that much of any of the above).

If you’re wandering about the other 7 bottles. They were all great; so good in fact that I didn’t get around to writing anything so amusing was the conversation they lubricated.