2016: a year without FOMO

While two years ago I'd go to every party, this year it felt like I'd never even heard the word FOMO. In 2016, I had only one goal: to expand the club. It started with registering Le Club des Vins with the Chamber of Commerce, which meant skipping many a party. Even the Friday afternoon drinks sometimes took place via WhatsApp...

What then?

No Lowlands, but luckily it did open other doors. For example, over the past six months I've written columns for various wine websites and magazines . In August, I was crowned Wine Queen from the Kleine Schorre – complete with helicopter entrance, a crown, and your own wine glass. In that role, I tasted the new harvest a month later with Harold Hamersma, Hubrecht Duijker, and Ronald de Groot during the celebration of the 10-year collaboration between KLM and the Kleine Schorre.

The wine tours of 2016

I also traveled a lot. That started in January with a weekend Valencia , where I still remember the delicious sirloin steak with Rioja as if it were yesterday. What a fantastic city. Can I go back? A month later, I visited Chantal, who was pregnant, in Portugal, where I once again immersed myself in Portuguese cuisine with sheep's milk cheeses, vinho verde, and fresh fish. In April, I went again, but this time to visit the baby. Lovely!

In the summer I went to Kaysersberg with Hanneke to wines of Alsace to see it up close (and taste it). It's incredibly beautiful and you can get there in no time! In September I visited Charles in Stavanger, where instead of wine I focused on coffee poured. In between, we climbed another fjord. In November, we went on a weekend trip to Oslo, where we visited a good wine bar, among other things. have discovered!

Special wines

And then 2016 was also the year I tasted two extraordinary wines. Each one was a moment I never thought I'd experience. That might sound a bit dramatic, but these are incredibly rare wines. The chance of me tasting them simply wasn't that great.

That was Champagne Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Francaises 2006 at Wijnhandel Peeters. At the end of the last century, Europe was ravaged by a phylloxera epidemic. It destroyed almost all European vineyards. In Champagne, three small vineyards were spared. These plots were (and still are) owned by Champagne House Bollinger. What does a ten-year-old Champagne taste like? Very special. I tasted apple and cinnamon cake, dried mango, vanilla, and brioche.

Speaking of old wines, in November I tasted the 1961 pinot noir from Domaine Rapet – also at Wijnhandel Peeters. I nearly fell off my chair when I heard we'd be tasting a '61. Fifty years old and still just as lively, fruity, but primarily tertiary aromas – the aromas a wine develops after bottle aging. Mushrooms, dried and candied fruit, forest floor, and leaves.