bourgogne + jura + comte wine tasting

Franck invited me to a wine tasting at Alp'Expo today. It was wines of the Jura and Bourgogne, so how could I say no?

I brought Zoe with me to indoctrinate her on the joys of wine early, and it turned out to suit her just fine, since there was an impressive display of different Comtes:





which Zoe enjoyed thoroughly "TWO CHEESE!" (one for each hand). We tasted several Comte's, and all were quite amazing. I think that the chances of experiencing Comte like this outside of Europe are probably pretty small, even with Fedex Cheese via fromages.com. After all, some of these cheeses were of very limited availability even in france. I settled on the valempouliere from april 08, with the charles arnaud extra indeuillers a close second. All of them were fantastic though.


Next, I gave Franck a few expert tips on wine tasting:

(obviously it was the other way around)
We tasted many expensive wines, and the perfect pairing of Comte and Vin Jaune. Thankfully, the pours were not super deep, or I would not have been able to drive home. As it was, I had to wait a little while before leaving. Zoe was very happy throughout the experience, throwing the stopper to her apple sauce packets and making me sheepishly chase them down. The whole experience was great: Francks friends bought a big chunk of Comte and some bread, which we all indulged in as we tasted wines and talked. There seemed to be at least three categories of people in attendance: The first were the wine lovers who were there to enjoy the opportunity to try the best of the Bourgogne and Jura and maybe bring home a few bottles. The second were the get-down-to business people who arrived with large empty dollies and left quickly with large full dollies. The last seemed to be the frugal drinkers in search of a cheap and convenient buzz. To their credit, the younger ones did an admirable job pretending that they were enjoying the taste. The last category was not restricted to underage drinkers, however. The older drinkers were throwing the wine back with less pretense though. I saw one guy actually tipping his head horizontal to get the last drops out before immediately demanding more (no pause to reflect on the taste!).