Chateau Angelus

We've all seen Bond uttering the ubiquitous "shaken, not stirred" line for his vodka martinis, specifically Smirnoff vodka martinis which made Smirnoff suddenly shot to stardom with its vodka. Try to remember this scene: The bottle of Angélus features prominently while Bond dines with Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green, in a railway dining car on his way to the Casino Royale in Montenegro - transposed from the original novel's Monte Carlo.

Now picture me drinking from the same Chateau on last Friday night. Yes, we (my wine friends and me) had a vertical wine tasting on Chateau Angelus. A vertical wine tasting involves wines from different vintages but all the wines will come from the same winery. If the winery produces more than one type of wine you would select a single wine from that winery and taste multiple vintages of that wine. Thus that night, we had 8 different vintages of Angelus (1989,1990,1991,1994,1995,1996,1998&2000). Honestly, this is my first time doing a vertical wine tasting and I was rather excited about drinking from the same chateau as James Bond just like how I started my Smirnoff liking.

The Angélus vineyard, which totals 23.4 hectares, is situated on the famous côtes of St Emilion with the clay and limestone typical terroir typical of the region. Saint-Émilion is one of the principal red wine areas of Bordeaux along with the Medoc, Graves and Pomerol. FYI, Chateau Angelus is categorised as a Premiers grands crus classés B and only Chateau Ausone and Chateau Cheval Blanc made it to classés A.

The 6 of us drank 8 bottles.

The older wines were decantered for a few hours.

When there's good wine, there's always good food to go with it. Ah, and the good company too. My friends refused to be revealed in my blog and thus I shall refer them as Mr.A, Mr.H, Mr.L, Mr.W and Ms E and I'm the small "e". I shall let these wine connoisseurs stay anonymous. The good food and wine that I've been having all along are all thanks to this bunch of interesting people. They trained my palate and should I blame them for me acquiring such an expensive taste now? Imagine the days where I was still having Australian Yellowtail wine with San Francisco steaks and now this!

Clockwise: Chunks of Sharks Fin with thick broth, Abalone,Mini Lobsters and Iberian Pig.

A plate of noodles with shrimp eggs and meat held by Mr.L. The only part of the body that I can reveal are his hands.

My dreams of eating a bowl of birds nest all by myself has been fulfilled. This bowl is really full of birds nest and I hardly find a spoonful of liquid! Lol

We used different glasses for different vintages of wine throughout the dinner. Washing the glasses is not my concern. My focus was to find my favourite vintage.

This is my ultimate favourite. The 1989. We did a tasting according to the ratings. We started off with the good ones and ended with the best ones irrespective of the years.

Initially I liked the 1990. It has a good nose of smoke, blackcurrant and spices which is at its stage of maturity and I think it's the perfect time to drink it. However, the 1989 has outshone the 1990. With a nice bouquet, outstanding tannins and lasting finish, it's simply fabulous. The bottles are retailed at around RM1000-3000 per bottle.

When asked about the dishes that night, the abalone was everyone's clear favourite. Honestly, I don't really like abalone anymore. For the first time in my LIFE, I was not looking forward to eating abalone. (Not being arrogant or showing off), I have been eating it almost everytime I went out for dinner together with them and after so many dinners, my abalone cravings had seemed to vanish. I think the birds nest was my favourite that night. So, maybe we shouldn't have too many times of this birds nest or else I'll lose interest too.... (I wonder would it ever apply to my man?)

Juan Lopez

We had good food, good wine, good company and the last thing to have was of course CIGARS! Mr.W is always our cigar supplier. He must be the one person that I know uses the most ziplock bags. He likes to store his cigars in these ziplock bags. We puffed the night away with a Habana cigar each.

The only cigarette that I would never decline. I love good cigars. HDM for instance.

After licking till the last drop from the bottles, Mr.L and Ms.E, hung the Angelus bottles to the wine holders beside the door removing the previously not-so-prestige-wine bottles. They even wanted to name this room the Angelus room. Imbi Palace had been just renovated and I must say that the renovation is quite impressive. So if you ever had your meal at Imbi Palace, check out this room upstairs, in front of the couch.

Thanks to Mr.L for the great dinner. A dinner like this is never cheap. I don't know the prices of the food because I only know how to eat but the wines will definitely cost you a bomb. It ranges from RM600-3000 a bottle all thanks to Mr. Bond having a sip of Angelus in Casino Royale.





Bond drinks Angelus. 82 Angelus.



Eiling drinks Angelus too. 89 Angelus.