French Wine tasting with The French Cellar

I love wine as much as my sleep. Wine (and alcohol in particular) also helps me to get through motherhood. We did not live in wine regions in Australia. The region we had lived in, Queensland, is too hot to grow grapes. Western Australia ( Margaret River), South Australia and Victoria are the best wine regions in Australia.

Since I live in Singapore, I've been exposed by variety of wines from around the world. Kind of overwhelming, to be honest, because my wine knowledge is still very little. Back in Brisbane, I always scared to touch French, Spanish and Italian wines in Dan Murphy's aisle because I know nothing about them. Interestingly enough, Ed took me to wine tasting night with Singapore Mining Club run by The French Cellar. I fell in love with their French wines! They have good French wines, seriously! Let me talk about how The French Cellar runs their wine tasting.

I finally become one of event hosts in Stay At Home Wives meet up group. Most of the ladies in our group love wine and they also need a night out, just like Cinderella who needs to wear her pretty dress and a night out once in a while. I have decided to organise the wine tasting for my first event hosting. I reached out The French Cellar and got a nice replied from Catherine Chevalier who is willing to help me to run it. I have decided to choose my event place in Bar-A-Thym, the casual french restaurant at Gemill Lane, Telok Ayer. On my previous visit to Bar-A-Thym, I still remember clearly their mouth watering food would perfectly paired with French wines. Splendid!

Finally, I get to know Catherine in person after 2 weeks through email. First time we introduce each other, I would have mistakenly thought she is American from her thick American accent. She is originally from Burgundy, France, when she was 17 she went to US as an exchange student for a year, then went back to France. She continued her education in Germany for a year to do her Bachelor's degree then back to France for wine studies in Bordeaux. Wine study? Sounds very interesting, doesn't it? Now got me thinking, where did I do wrong? I should have studied it :)

One of the participants is Makis, originally from Philippine but had lived in France for 15 years. She is also a wine enthusiast and has quite wide knowledge of French wines. I've learnt a lot about French wines from her.

Makis and Catherine are having an interesting discussion about wine and its regions.

We started with sparkling wines from region in France called Alcase then continue with white wine from Bordeaux. I drink white wine but somehow white wine's acidity is not my favourite. It's all about preference, right? I am more of red wine girl, full bodied ones especially. So when the red wines have brought in, I was very excited. The first red wine is from Beaujolais which fruity, very light and easy to drink. I don't normally enjoy light red wine but this time I liked it and actually enjoyed light red wine. The second red wine is L"Enclos Pontys, Montravel. This wine is fruity, full bodied and very fine finish. As usual, I prefer this type of wine.

Catherine has delivered her wine knowledge through wine tasting. We have tasted 5 different wines, 1 sparkling, 1 white wine, 1 rosé and 2 red wines. By the end of the night, everybody is happy and a little bit tipsy, we brought home our French wine knowledge.