Antonello Passa, GM of the Royal
Cliff Hotels Group, welcomes deVine club members and guests to the grand
celebration.
Dr. Iain Corness
Appreciation of wine is a very personal experience. What you may enjoy,
your partner may not. There is no universal tasting, but rather than rush out
and buy bottles that you may regret later, there is another way. This is via the
popular wine tastings.
Now there are the formal wine tastings, complete with spittoons and water to
drink so that you are not being influenced by the previous wine. It is from
tastings like this that the wine connoisseurs grade the vineyards’ wines and you
can (almost) take it as read that a wine with a score over 90 is a “good” wine.
Another style of wine tasting, as used so successfully by the Royal Cliff, is to
have different wine suppliers dotted around a room (in this case the Grand
Ballroom) plus food stations so that the wine tasting members of the deVine Wine
Club are safe to drive home after the two hour tasting session.
Dr Iain Corness, a founding member
of the deVine Club reminisces about the days when it all began.
The food stations were, as always, under the watchful eye of
executive Chef Walter Thenisch, and the range and standard was without flaw. I
have mentioned before that Walter, with his years of experience could so easily
just re-run something he produced years before - but he doesn’t. He is as up to
date as a young chef with his first toque ready to conquer the world left to him
by Escoffier himself.
For me, the wines which took my fancy included an amazingly named Verdejo
Sauvignon Blanc Sexy & Cool Bodegas Arúspide, Tierra de Castilla, represented by
BNK Pattaya Wine complete with some lovely young sexy and cool representatives.
It was also impossible to go past the Wine Dee Dee stand with the Stonefish
Merlot 2010. I backed up a couple of times for that, but on the third attempt at
indulgence, they had run out, and there were eight bottles originally!
Bangkok Beer and Beverage had an amusing Gérard Bertrand Crémant de Limoux AOP,
which I also enjoyed more than once.
With the DeVine Wine Club members circulating around the ballroom gave everyone
the opportunity to compare their choices with those of others, and of course
there was a wide disparity, as there should be with such a personal thing as
wine appreciation.
For those who were unable to attend, I have attached the list of wines and
suppliers. Read Pattaya Mail and you won’t miss the next DeVine Wine Club event.
