A Christmas Work Out

After a brief stint of vacation de-tox, we're now settling in for the holiday season and we're off to quite a first weekend in December. First up is my office party and that's going to be followed immediately by Boo's and my hosting of the Dinner Club. We won't even make it to Jeaux and Matinder's annual Christmas Bash this year since it's the same night as my office party.

It's become a bit of tradition for the C&C gang to head to one of two sister restaurants downtown. We're going French this year and, surprise, both of the wines that were being served were French. Go figure.

1003. 2009 Loron & Fils - Montvallon Chardonnay (AOC Bourgogne Blanc - France)

For a company that's been around for almost 200 years, there wasn't much to be found out about this Loron & Fils wine. They have a number of wines featured on their website, but this isn't one of them. I did see that Loron & Fils is now into its sixth generation of fils (or sons) though. Being wine merchants that specialize in Beaujolais and Mâconnais wines and the fact that this wine is produced under the general White Burgundy appellation, my guess is that this is an entry level wine for mass market export and that it is made from Chardonnay grapes that have been sourced from throughout the region.

It's pleasant enough as an easy drinker and it matched up nicely with the hors d'oeuvres that were offered - particularly the shrimp - but I don't know if it's a wine that I'd order off the menu for myself. It seems to get its fair share of glowing reviews in Canadian wine press though and a price tag of under $20 at the liquor store is pretty good for a white Burgundy.

1004. 2010 Domaine Gayda Three Winds Syrah (Vins de Pays d'Oc - France)

The evening's red was a Syrah from the south of France. In fact, it's the newer vintage of the same wine that we had last year at the holiday dinner. That vintage was blogged at #664; so it looks like we managed to get through 340 wines over the course of the year. Not exactly a bottle a day but pretty darn close (especially since we haven't had a bottle in a week or so).

With that post at #664, I discussed what constitutes a Vin de Pays wine and the overall French wine appellation system in a fair bit of detail; so, I won't repeat myself here but that post is still there for anyone wanting to read a little more.

I wasn't blown away by the Three Winds last year and I'm afraid it still didn't really do anything for me this time around either. I kept some on hand to accompany my steak au poivre, but I moved back to the Chardy for a last glass once the steak was done.

The return to white seemed to make a little more sense than moving on to the hard liquor or fortified sips. Boo and I had a busy day ahead of us and I didn't really need to end up kissing or punching any of my colleagues. The stuff staff party stories are made of tends to scare me nowadays - particularly when some of our crew are known to love tripping the light fantastic. The layout of the restaurant didn't allow us to create our own dance floor, but that didn't stop Betsy from doing her best to get a bit of a dance under way. Unfortunately, a number of folks had already made their way home before we managed to take command of the volume control and music choice. A full scale dance party never did break out this year.

That might have been a good thing for my morning after though. And, now the holiday season is officially under way.