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1997: Le Prix du Champagne Lanson Noble Cuvée Award for investigations into Champagne for the Millennium investment scams

2001: Le Prix Champagne Lanson Ivory Award for investdrinks.org

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2012: International Wine Challenge – Personality of the Year Award




Friday 4 November 2016

1999 Vieilles Vignes. Domaine Gauby + pair of Billings' grouse

1999 Vieilles Vignes, 
Côtes du Roussillon Villages, Domaine Gauby


Happily there are some compensations to shorter hours of daylight etc. Along with the vintage in the Northern Hemisphere, game birds are one of them. Tonight we enjoyed a plumb brace of grouse brought from Billings, the fishmonger and butcher at 45 Sydenham Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5EX. 

Fancying a pheasant for this this evening, I phoned this morning to reserve one. Unfortunately they had no fresh pheasants only frozen, so I said I would pick one up later and look to cook it on Sunday and buy something else for today.  

Very soon after I got a call from Hugh at Billings saying that they had a couple of fresh grouse – was I interested? I certainly was as we hadn't had any grouse this year so far. At £6.99 for each plumb bird they represented good value – in a restaurant you probably don't think too hard when ordering a starter at £6.99 or more. 

Our pair of grouse deserved a special bottle so we opted for our last bottle of Gérard Gauby's 1999, which was soft, rich and excellent and a fine match with the grouse.    

3 comments:

Bob Rossi said...

Sounds great. Pheasant, grouse, and Domaine Gauby. Three things that are very difficult to find in the US. Unless you hunt, although that doesn't help with the Gauby.

Bob Parsons said...

Gauby is hard to find in my area of Alberta too!

Bob Rossi said...

SAQ stores in Quebec have some Gauby wines: http://www.saq.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SearchDisplay?pageSize=20&searchTerm=*&pageView=grid&catalogId=50000&facet=ads_f7%3A%22SCEA+Domaine+Gauby%22&showOnly=product&beginIndex=0&langId=-1&productId=12689520&storeId=20002&metaData=.

I hope to pick some up next time we pass through the province. And isn't there now some kind of inter-province ordering in Canada?