Beaujolais Nouveau 2017

Every year I try a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Beaujolais Nouveau day was on November 16th, and I bought a bottle of the  "Villages" 2017; thinking that the "Villages" appellation would some how confer some extra quality. It didn't. It did not taste very good; there was too much malo-lactic conversion on the nose. The lactic acid made the wine smell a bit cheesy or buttery. It wasn't of very high quality and did not represent good value for money at £8 a bottle. It would be unfair to recognise the winemaker or the retailer. Some people might find the taste acceptable.  We could only stomach half a bottle. I poured the remaining half down the drain as it was not worth saving even for cooking.

We had a visitor from France the other day and she brought along a bottle of Nouveau. I haven't had the courage to open it yet.

Every year, I promise myself that I shall not buy another bottle of this disappointing wine. It will be my New Year resolution: I hope it will last until November 15th 2018.

Don't buy Grandpa a bottle of drink for Christmas

Here we go again: campaigners are are urging young people not to buy their grandfathers a bottle of drink for Christmas. Why are they bothering with this nonsense? A huge majority of the population know that if you drink too much then you can damage your physical and mental health.

It is patronising, in the extreme, to both young and old that they should  should be persuaded to change their behaviour in this roundabout way.

Christmas is a time for sharing and it is quite likely that your grandpa will share out the bottle of wine that you have brought with you. Most grand parents are not alcoholics who hide away their bottle of gin or whiskey. They are just as entitled to drink a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey over the Christmas period as anyone else. What are they supposed to do? Sit down and drink a glass of fruit juice whilst everyone else is enjoying some sociability with a bottle of wine?

Some people drink too much for a number of reasons and if they are affecting their health by boozing too much then they should be helped; not patronised or nagged.

One of my best friends was an alcoholic and he smoked too much as well. This ultimately led to his early death from throat cancer.  We spoke about and discussed his addiction a number of times. He was an intelligent man and knew what his addiction meant. He chose not to seek treatment. Would any nagging and patronising from me have made any difference to his predicament? No: it would not have.

The agencies which try to nudge us in a particular direction should consider carefully what they are doing.  We are being bombarded with blandishments that we should not eat particular types of food and that we should not drink a glass of wine with our dinner. Most of their recommendations fall on deaf ears but if we were to follow their path we could end up leading unsociable and miserable lives.

We are all going to die and there is nothing that the health authorities and drink aware etc. can do to stop this. If sharing some rib of beef and drinking half a bottle of wine with it, every now and then, results in me dying six months earlier then so be it.  Life is about balance and making the correct decisions to protect your well being whilst you are alive. It would be better if we all all made an effort to assess the facts rather than rely upon blandishments to behave one way or another.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-buy-grandpa-drink-for-christmas-plead-campaigners-wq8krwmjq

Squerryes English Sparkling Wine

A few weekends ago I paid a visit to the Squerryes Estate Tasting Room in Westerham Kent with my wife and family. My wife and I live nearby and we have driven past their  winery and tasting rooms, in Beggars lane,  so many times that we can't remember; but always with the intention of going in to taste some English bubbly. My sister and brother-in-law were with us and we had an hour to spare to taste some decent wine.  The tasting rooms were well worth the visit as they also house a small brewery and a restaurant.

https://squerryes.co.uk/sparkling-wines/

Squerryes wine production is part of the Squerryes Court estate which is set in 2,500 acres of the the Kent country side. The House and the major part of the estate are located just south of Westerham. The winery and tasting room is located a mile or so away to the east of Westerham and there is a vineyard to the north of Westerham near the main road to Biggin Hill.

The estate planted 35 acres of pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier grapes  in 2006. The vineyards are located just below the rolling slopes of the north downs. The geology is based on chalk deposits and is very similar to that of the Côte des Blancs champagne producing area in the Marne. The Squerryes estate geology and climate are well suited to the production of English Sparkling Wine or dare I say it "English Champagne". My wife is from Champagne and she has no objection to my use of the term "English Champagne".

The growing conditions here in Kent are, of course, different to the Côte des Blancs. In Kent the winters are warmer and the summers are cooler and there is more rainfall. The climate in Champagne is semi-continental. The vineyards in Kent are a couple of degrees further north than the vineyards of the Côte des Blancs. Nevertheless the Squerryes vineyard is capable of producing wines which are similar in taste and quality to the vineyards in Champagne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B4te_des_Blancs

We tasted three " English Champagnes" the 2013 Vintage Brut, the 2013 Rosé and the 2010 Vintage Brut. The winery does not make non-vintage bubbly. My wife and I thought that the 2013 cuvées were a little light but they had all of the attributes of a good and well balanced sparkling wine. We thought that the 2010  vintage Brut was of much higher quality with a lovely biscuit taste, it was savoury with a taste of cider and, of course, fermented yeast. It had a taste of its own and this marks it out as good wine. It was well balanced for acidity and sweetness. This wine is well suited for opening on a special occasion with its fine bubbles. The 2013 vintages can be laid down and they will improve with age. The wines compete well with other English Sparkling Wines and for taste and quality with many Champagnes.

The Squerryes bubbly does not in anyway compete on price with Champagne even with the pound plunging. Our bottle of 2010 to take away cost £50. If you think I am rich then I am not; just an enthusiast for good wine. You can still buy a bottle of Pol Roger Non-Vintage Brut for less than £40 in Waitrose. We can buy top quality Chamapagne direct from the makers in France for 16 Euro  a bottle - with the falling exchange rate and commission our favourite Champagne has now gone up to 16 quid a bottle.

Even with such high prices I still think that it is worth supporting English Wine producers who have to contend with a very variable climate, the lack of demand and the high unit cost of production. The quality of English Sparkling wine is much higher than any still English wines that I have ever tasted.

If you are in the Westerham area then why not give yourself a treat and visit the Squerryes winery. It is obvious that the staff and management are just as dedicated and skillful as their counterparts in France and that they have pride in their product. All this shows through.

Westerham is a charming town where you can go to visit some good pubs and Quebec House. Chartwell, the home of  Sir Winston Churchill, is also nearby.

Opinions about wine and Château La Croix du Lys red 2014

We drank half a bottle of this wine with some some shoulder  of roast lamb the other night and polished off the rest of the bottle the following evening with some lamb cawl.  I rather enjoyed the  Château La Croix du Lys red 2014. It was full of plum fruit and blackcurrant flavour. It was quite complex and of full body. The tannin was already quite well integrated. It went down well with the lamb and the taste remained on the palate for quite a long time after swallowing. It had all the hallmarks of good standard Bordeaux and it was good value for money. It would probably improve in the bottle for a couple of years longer.

I looked up the wine on on some websites and the opinion of this wine varied especially on this site.

https://www.vivino.com/wineries/croix-du-lys/wines/bordeaux-2011

For starters the website gets the origin of the wine wrong. Château La Croix du Lys originates in the Blaye region of Bordeaux: the wine is AOC Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux and not Entre-deuxs-Mers.

One drinker rated the wine as disappointing and not interesting. Another rated, the wine more highly, with notes of wood flavour -presumably oak- an elegant wine which was fine and lightly spiced. These are indeed very different opinions. One of the drinkers awarded it 5 out of 5 stars without giving a verbal opinion.

Who is right and who is wrong? Who can tell? Some tasters may be more sensitive to some flavours than others. Some may just be prejudiced. Some may be expecting something better or worse than what they actually tasted. Some maybe looking at the label and then making a judgement. My bottle of Château La Croix du Lys 2014 did not set an expectation on the label as there was no description of the wine. You have to make your own judgement as far as the producer, Simon Rey et Fils, is concerned.

You can learn about the features of wine which give you a clue about the quality of the wine and its potential to improve with ageing. You can learn to spot when a wine is corked, but even then some people are oblivious to the cork taint produced by a combination of a miscreant fungus and the antibiotic used to treat it. Even if you cannot taste cork taint then the affected wine will have lost its fruit character. Some Masters of Wine are unable to sniff out a cork taint but they should be able to recognise that the wine has lost a lot of its quality when affected by 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA) cork taint. Top wines are not immune to cork taint, no matter what they cost, as most top wines will be sealed with a cork.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_taint

A top quality wine may simply be not to your taste; before buying a case of an expensive wine you should taste it. If you are a wine investor you should do the same to ensure that your wine has got the ageing potential to increase in value over many years. Whether you drink your wine or invest in wine you should learn to trust your own judgement. Why not do a wine course?

https://www.wsetglobal.com/

What wine to drink with "Cawl"

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I visited Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Wales.  We went to the covered market for lunch, or dinner, as they often call lunch in that part of the world. The ladies at the food booth in the market served up one of the best cawls I have ever eaten. It was made with bacon rather than lamb. In fact, we dined out on some of the best food I have ever eaten;  £6.95 for a bowl of cawl and a cup of tea - what a bargain. I have visited many of the world's greatest cities and have dined in some of their finest restaurants: the Tenby ladies are easily the equals of top chefs.

Many readers who have never visited Wales maybe asking what is cawl and this might be why you reached this blog?

Cawl is simply Welsh for broth or stew. This dish is now becoming quite trendy in Wales in up market pubs. Usually, it will be served with lamb and cheese. The cheese is stirred into the stew to melt. You will also be served a lump of bread and welsh salted butter to soak up the broth.

Cawl was originally a peasant dish as the blog below admirably describes. In former times root vegetables and cabbage and leeks were the only plant ingredients available to make a stew in winter. In Wales right up into the 1960's  my mother never made a stew, in winter, with tomatoes as they were not in the shops. Other vegetables such as courgettes and were never even heard of, let alone sold at the green grocer.

My Mum made cawl from swedes, potatoes, carrots, leeks, cabbage and sometimes turnips and parsnips. We ate bread with it but rarely stirred in grated cheese. She added lamb or beef to the stew. Cawl, is the best way to eat swedes and turnips. I can't stand either the flavour, sight or feel of a dollop of boiled swede added to the meat and two vegetables for Sunday lunch.

Cawl is not limited to having lamb as the main source of meat. You can just as well use pork, ham, mutton or even chicken. In areas near the sea you can use fish. The very poor might even have used a wild rabbit, caught with a terrier, but skinned and gutted of course.

When meat was in short supply or you could not afford to eat it every day of the week then you could just add the stock from the previous day's boiled ham for flavour. Cawl was originally a peasant or country dish there was no desire or money to add fancy ingredients - it was every day eating and not trendy.

My mother was from London and never used the word cawl for her stew, my Welsh father rarely corrected her; he preferred to eat his stew rather than have it poured over his head. Whatever the dish was called, it was always delicious and it always tasted better when added to the next day and reheated.

Some people eat or drink the broth first and then consume the meat and vegetables afterwards. My family never did this; we ate the broth together with the meat and veg. We then mopped up the remaining broth from the bowl with bread. Nothing was wasted and there was less washing up. If everything was well diced up there was no need for a knife and fork: just a spoon would do.

http://www.bodnant-welshfood.co.uk/welsh-cawl-3668/.html

But what do you drink with your cawl? Before the 1970's the Welsh would have had no pretensions to drink wine with their stew: a cup of tea went down very well at home or, in a pub, a pint of bitter.

I made a cawl the other night using diced bacon. My wife fancied some wine so we drank half a bottle of Stepp - Pinot Noir from the Pfalz in Germany. We finished off the rest of the bottle with another bowl of my cawl the following evening. This medium-body wine went really well with bacon. You could also try an Alsace Pinot Noir and if you want to spoil yourself a bottle of red Burgundy.

http://www.marksandspencer.com/stepp-pinot-noir-case-of-6/p/p60092266

We also make  cawl from lamb and the last time we did this we drank a standard red Bordeaux from a French supermarket.

https://enchateauhautrian.com/

If you make your cawl with wild rabbit or hare why not try Cahors from south west France. The strong taste of the wine conferred by the strong tannin and flavour of the Malbec black grapes goes well with game. It is best to let your Cahors mature for a few years before drinking.

https://www.frenchentree.com/living-in-france/wine/the-black-wine-of-cahors/

If you are making a sea-food cawl why not try a white Bordeaux or an Albariño from northern Spain or an Alvarinho from Portugal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/dining/wine-review-white-bordeaux.html

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/glossary/albari%C3%B1o

http://www.marksandspencer.com/tercius-alvarinho-case-of-6/p/p60042772


Here is my recipe for cawl made with bacon. I have got no time for quoting weights.

Chop up enough smoked bacon, or  use ready chopped lardons, with more than sufficient for the numbers dining.
Likewise, chop up some potatoes.
Chop up some carrots.
Chop up a couple of leeks.
Slice up some greens or cabbage.
Chop up some swede and /or turnips
Slice some parsnips to taste ( I don't usually use parsnips).

Use a cast iron pot with a lid.

Grease the bottom of the poth and lightly fry the bacon.
When the bacon is cooked add a glass of water.
Add the vegetables to the meat add more water to fill up the pot and bring the cawl to the boil.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Stir the pot.
I also add lemon juice and honey to taste. In the olden days they would not have used lemon juice but cider vinegar would have been available and could be used today.
Use a meat stock - chicken or beef or bacon to taste.
I add juniper berries, cloves and cinnamon to taste. These were probably not used in the good old days.

After the cawl has been brought to the boil,  simmer it for two hours or so. I pour some water into the depression of our "Le Creuset " lid to help reduce the temperature to stop all the fluid in the pot boiling away too quickly. I stir the pot again before refilling the lid.

Be careful if you make cawl with fish. It is probably best to add any fish towards the end of cooking because over cooked fish will end up looking and feeling rubbery and tough.

Serve the cawl piping hot into a large soup bowl. Add some Welsh cheese to taste or some English cheddar and eat the stew with some buttered brown bread.

Add to the leftovers the following day to enjoy your delicious soup once or twice again. I never get fed up of eating cawl as it is full of taste and goodness.

Enjoy.

Moroccan Wine - Sidi Zahia Vin Rouge AOG Beni M'tir

On our last trip to France we bought some Moroccan wine in Intermarche and it cost about 3 Eur a bottle.

For such a low price I was impressed our bottle of blended non-vintage Sidi Zahia tasted really good and it was exceptional value for money. The wine was Appellation D'Origine Garantie from Beni M'tir which is in the hills above Fez.

Moroccan wine producers learnt a lot about wine making from the French who planted vines in the sandy soils in the hills of Northern Morocco.  The sandy soils protected the vines from the Phylloxera insect pests that ravaged Europe in the late 19th Century.

Sidi Zahia is a light body red wine made  from black grape varieties common to Southern France. The wine is fruity and well balanced for tannin, acidity and sugar content. It is rather reminiscent of wines from the Languedoc but it has a flavour of its own.

We drank the wine with Merguez sausages from France and it went well with the spice. The wine would go down well with any grilled meat.

I would gladly have paid 6 or 7 Eur for this wine. It competes well with standard French wine. It also competes more than favourably with English red wines costing 10 pounds or more. It just goes to show how a favourable climate is conducive to quality wine production. The English climate still has a long way to go before English red wine makers can compete with Mediterranean producers.

Three cheers for Intermarche and their wine expert club. At about 3 Eur a bottle why not buy some Moroccan wine when you are in France next. Drink it at a barbecue for what passes for an English summer, it is so cheap you have got nothing to lose.

Blind Tasting Competitions- Good fun unless you lose

I think that wine tasting competitions are a complete waste of time. The object of a wine tasting is to determine the quality of the wine and its fitness for purpose. Can the wine be kept for several years to improve in the bottle? Is the wine a true investment wine?  Should the wine really only be drunk with food. Is the wine a fake? You also want to find out if the wine is good value for money.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2016/10/chinese-blind-tasting-team-claims-shock-victory/

 A blind tasting is organised to make sure that the power of suggestion and brand reputation is eliminated from the taster's judgement. It should not be a competition to determine who is best as guessing where a wine comes from, what grapes it is made of and the year it was produced etc. You can easily find out this information from the bottle so why put yourself to all that trouble?

There are literally tens of thousands of different wines. If  you try and show off how knowledgeable and skillful you are then you can easily become a cropper in a blind tasting.


I know only one of the wines tasted in the competition - the Jurançon from Domaine Cauhapé: this wine is top quality. We have friends who live in the area which we visit regularly. My wife and I would have difficulty distinguishing this wine from other top quality wines from Jurançon. It would be down more to luck than judgement.

Under wine tasting or examination conditions stress can play tricks on you. On my wine courses I got acquainted with a professional wine taster who was spot on, when blind tasting in the classroom, but who confused port with a fortified wine from Australia under examination conditions.

Wine tasting competitions are good fun and help with publicity. They are not to be taken seriously.

Anyone for a white port and tonic?

There is supposed to a new trend for a summer drink of white port and tonic. All sorts of trendy people are supposed to be raving about it.

http://www.instyle.co.uk/lifestyle/white-port-tonic-london-drink-of-the-summer

Up until this summer most people couldn't have cared less about white port. White port never excited my taste buds and I refuse to get excited because something is trendy. Just because Portugal is a lovely place to go it does not mean that white port is a wonderful drink: it is not and it is not improved by adding tonic water to it.

What next, will Babycham comeback into fashion?

http://www.babycham.com/

London is a "hip" capital but that fact does not make jellied eels any more palatable. Why not wash down a plate of jellied eels with some white port and tonic? In this way you can be a real double trend setter.

The only mixed wine based drink that I can stand is sangria, in Spain, and then only after a decade or so of a break.

If you want to drink a really good white wine from Portugal, why not try a glass of cool alvarinho
straight and untainted by additions. It may not be trendy but you won't regret it and you will show that you are a wine drinker of distinction.

http://www.winesofportugal.com/en/food-and-wine/grape-varieties/white/alvarinho/

People rate wines higher if given elaborate descriptions

"The Independent" newspaper has published this rather interesting article which deserves to be read.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/wines-elaborate-descriptions-taste-better-appear-study-labels-a7776966.html.

This short article confirms my suspicion that the power of suggestion has an undue influence on the opinion of a wine. If a wine is elaborately described with positive comments about its flavour, smell and structure, along with exciting descriptions  about the location of the vineyard etc. then it will be rated more favourably than the same wine tasted under "blind" conditions. The same applies when a wine is believed to be more expensive than the same wine tasted under "blind" conditions. All this is a marketing ploy.

This same principle applies to the other industries especially the hi-fi industry and the cosmetics industry. This is why some hi-fi manufactures can sell enthusiasts cables, which cost thousands of pounds per metre, that do not perform any better than well constructed ordinary cables which costs no more than a few pounds per metre. They have no scientific evidence to back up their claims. No results of peer reviewed double blind listening tests are ever revealed to the public.

I was once in a cosmetics shop in France with my wife. Part of the advertising campaign was for a face lifting cream which would defy the laws of gravity. Newton and Einstein might have had something to say about that but such claims are believed and make cosmetic manufacturers a fortune for creams and lotions that are produced in huge vats in a factory for a few pence a litre. Once again, no results of peer reviewed double blind tests are ever revealed to the public.

I have probably been a victim of the power of suggestion regarding wine myself. But, after attending wine courses and blind tastings I have taught myself to do my best to ignore the power of suggestion, and I endeavour to do this is these pages to the best of my ability. I also endeavour not to be prejudiced. If you do not take an objective and scientific approach to wine tasting and selection you can quite easily be fooled into buying a wine that is not worth the money - caveat emptor.

Le Domaine de Trépaloup Mourvèdre 2015 Pay's D'Oc

On a recent trip to the South of France we discovered some wonderful wines from Le Domaine de Trépaloup. The vineyards are located about 30 miles north of Montpellier in the village of Saint Clément near the small town of Sommières. The scenery is lovely in this area and the soil and climate are so well suited to viticulture.

Since 2002 Rémi et Laurent Vandôme have been making the finest wines using organic or bio-dynamic techniques. The Domaine produces Appellation d'Origine Protégée Languedoc wines within its range. The Mourvèdre 2015 dry red is, however, of Vin de Pays status but this does not detract from its quality. This wine is a fruity red which can be consumed on its own or with food:preferably. It is perfectly balanced for tannin, acidity, sweetness, fruit flavour and body and it rests long on the palate.

The wine is superb value for money. I doubt that you would ever find this wine in the export markets or even in French supermarkets or wine merchants outside of the area. You really have no choice but to go to the region, and there are plenty of flights to Montpellier. Just allow yourself a little time to explore the surroundings to take in some sun and good food as well as perfect wine.

http://www.domainetrepaloup.com/

http://www.montpellier-france.com/

Bad Weather in France and the UK

The recent bad weather in France has almost devastated the vine crops in the Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux regions. In some areas up to 50% of the crop has been lost to frost. Similarly, late frost has damaged much of the vine crops in the UK.

Winemakers in France can survive a bad harvest but in the UK wine producers cannot benefit from large economies of scale as the vineyards are small and production is therefore limited. UK winemakers have to charge more per bottle and therefore they are not as price competitive as winemakers in France, Italy, Spain, California and Australia.

Taittinger is to become the first Champagne House to invest in sparkling wine production in the UK, with their partners they have acquired a multi-hectare site in Kent which was formerly an orchard.

They hope to produce their first bottles of English Sparkling wine from chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes in five years time. Let's wish them lots of success even though the weather in Kent can still be very unfavourable for wine production.

English Sparkling wine is perfectly capable of competing with sparklers from all over the world including Champagne. Taittinger will have plenty of room to grow vines, so let's hope that the price will be kept down a bit.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/champagne-taittinger-to-produce-english-sparkling-wine-in-kent

Wine apps

I downloaded a wine app onto my android phone and used it to identify three wines. All three were favourite wines of mine, two French and one Spanish. The Spanish wine is internationally famous. The wine app failed to identify all three.

Of course you are at liberty to enter the wine details into the the apps wine database. You are then providing the wine app developers with information for free.

You can easily buy a wine hand book which you can carry around in your pocket or handbag. Hugh Johnson produces a great one. You don't have to buy it every year. It gives you valuable information on all of the world's wine regions and their wines. It also has vintage charts and a wine and food matching section: it is a veritable encyclopedia. Other wine writers do something similar. I find that the wine descriptions and quality assessments are very good.

I have no objection to using the internet to educating yourself about wine.  However, a good wine handbook combined with a short course in wine and wine tasting will stand you in much better stead than a wine app gimmick. You can even write down your own tasting notes and there is nothing to stop you from sharing your observations and opinions on the web; very quickly you will be able to trust your own judgement rather than those of an automaton.

Domaine Iris du Guyon Bordeaux Rouge 2009

I was given a bottle of this prize winning wine and it is excellent. It is a typical Bordeax red and it has won prizes. It is for drinking now but you must drink it with good food.

I recommend it highly.

If you are in France and see it buy it.

http://www.vigneron-independant-aquitaine.com/vins-chateaux/?aoc=&search=iris+du+gayon

Boxing Day dinner

For Boxing day 2106 we ate roast rib of beef. And I must say that I preferred this to the venison that I cooked the previous day for Christmas. Beef is my favourite meat.

I prepared the sauce for the beef in the same way as I prepared the sauce for the venison ( see my previous blog) but this time I added the leftover venison stock. The venison stock could just as easily be replaced by beef stock or chicken stock.

Sometimes we cook beef with just a large knob of butter on top of the joint after we have inserted slivers of garlic into the flesh. We add half an onion to the roasting dish and a good half a glass of white wine to the roasting meat about half way through. The meat can then be basted with the resulting stock. This is very much in the French style of cooking.

Generally we sear the outside of the beef before cooking, but then we don't time the roasting as we do it by feel and by checking that the juices are running rare.

If by chance you are cooking from frozen make sure that the whole of the rib has reached room temperature before attempting to cook. If you want the best beef buy it the day before you cook it and store it in a cool place.

It is best to leave the beef rest for 15 minutes to half an hour before serving; you can cover it with tin foil to retain some of the heat.

If you must then you can see the timings and a recipe below.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/techniques/how-roast-and-carve-rib-beef

All beef is best eaten rare but rib of beef is very forgiving if you overcook it by trying to please your English and American friends.

My rib of beef tasted gorgeous we had bought it from a local butcher who knows how source and keep his beef properly.

What did we drink with this? Beef goes best with a full body Bordeaux or Rioja or a New World red or even a full body Italian red. A friend had given me a  bottle of Beronia 2012 Red Rioja Reserva. This wine is superb; it is full of red fruits with a hint of vanilla and cloves coming from the oak maturation. The plentiful tannin refreshes the palate. It has well balanced acidity, tannin, dryness and body. It is concentrated and complex and you could taste it well after you swallowed it. Above all it is easily recognisable as Rioja. It is a wine of good character and it should keep for a few years longer. What more could you ask for to go with the perfectly cooked beef

I might repeat all this next Christmas with luck.

Christmas Dinner Roast Venison and John Duval Eligo 2008

This year I cooked the Christmas Dinner. I did roast venison and it was mighty good. First I prepared a sauce in a large frying pan:

I chopped up an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic,
I fried the onions with some sunflower oil,
I added 200 ml of good port,
I added the garlic,
I added about 500 ml of water,
I added several blackberries,
A good dash of lemon juice,
I added some chicken stock,
A teaspoon of honey,
Some sea salt to taste,

I added a few juniper berries, some crushed cloves, pepper corns and a stick of cinnamon to taste.

I cooked the sauce whilst stirring it occasionally. I saved some of the juice to make a sauce later. I reduced the remaining sauce until it was thick.

I fried the joint of venison both sides until it was just becoming brown making sure that the juices of the sauce were well incorporated around the joint.

I warmed the oven to about 180 degrees C.

I greased an oven dish with some vegetable oil.  I coated the venison joint with the onions, garlic and berries remaining from the sauce on both sides. I added the remaining liquid to the joint.

I cooked the joint until it was cooked on the outside but rare in the middle.

I left the joint to rest in its dish before serving but covered the baking dish with foil.

After removing the joint to carve it. I poured out the juices and made the sauce.

My joint weighed about 1 kg so I cooked it for about 45 minutes at 180 degrees. I basted the joint and checked that it was not overcooked by piercing the flesh to ensure that the juices were running rare.

The joint was cooked perfectly and was full of game flavour. The seasoning , port and berry flavour went perfectly.

I kept the remaining sauce for the next day.

You may be asking, what is the best wine to go with this? Well you need a top red wine which has a full flavour to match and which has a good structure with sufficient tannin to cleanse the palate between mouthfuls of succulent meat.

I choose a fabulous candidate: John Duval Eligo 2008 Shiraz from the Barossa Valley. This wine will cost you a few bob; mine was a present from some Australian friends. I am a lucky man. This wine was lovely. It had the perfect balance of tannin, acidity and dryness. It was of full body. It was concentrated and complex. It had a strong taste of red fruits with a hint of oak, vanilla and cloves. It had long length on the palate. It had all of the attributes of an excellent wine, so it was good value for money. At six years old ready for drinking but this wine could have been kept longer.

It holds its own well with the top red wines from France, Italy, Spain and the US and, certainly, other top wines from Australia. Of course, this is wine to be savoured with the best food and should not be sloshed down at a barbecue. It went down well with some strong French cheeses after the main course.

It made a memorable day, with me cooking the Christmas day meal, even more memorable. My French wife was duly impressed and the wine won her over too.

https://www.masterofmalt.com/wine/john-duval/john-duval-eligo-reserve-shiraz-2008-wine/ 

Osteria Da Fabrizio Christmas Eve 2016

We like to go out on Christmas eve, my wife and I, and why not saunter down to a regular and favourite restaurant? Once again we went to Osteria Da Fabrizio where regularly we both enjoy the food, the wine and the music. It is in Orpington in the London borough of Bromley and it's half an hour's brisk walk away- for us anyway.

The music is important to me when I am dining and Fabrizio always plays the best jazz and blues. Every year he resists the temptation to play "Jingle Bells" "White Christmas" and "Away in a Manger". This alone is good reason to dine there.

For some reason this year every body seemed to be happier, maybe no one had been caught up in traffic jams trying to enter and leave the huge and local shopping malls.

We met some great people. I thought I recognised the accent of the young people on the next table; they were from Bermondsey and my mum was born there too. We enjoyed a lovely conversation ranging from life in South London to the exploits of Millwall football club.

On another table some of Fabrizio's French relatives were visiting from Nice which is  not far from the Italian border. My wife and I enjoyed a good conversation with them too.

We had very friendly if not familiar company.

 For food we shared starters of "Grigliata di Mare" or octopus calamari with king prawns. And, "Tagliolini Alla Coda d'Aragosta Marinata" or pasta with marinated fresh lobster tail.

For main course we both ate "Orata Al Cartoccio" or steamed sea bream.

For dessert we  both chose Chocolate fondant. We rarely chose the same menu but we could not resist the selection. All of this was delicious and served in an unpretentious and down to earth style.

The chocolate fondant was well cooked on the outside but runny in the middle; for me this is an indication of a chef that knows what he is doing.

So what wine did we drink? Well, we drank white wine of course. We washed the meal down with a bottle of 2010 Abruzzo Duca Thaulero Passerina Superiore DOP. This wine has the right balance of acidity, dryness, alcoholic strength, fruit flavour, concentration and complexity to complement both shell fish and sea bream etc.  It is high quality wine  at a reasonable price. The Abruzzo region is on the east coast of Italy in the central region. So it is no wonder that the wine goes well with fish - perfect.  Apparently, the Passerina grape is named after the sparrow which loves to eat the small ripe fruits on the vine - dream on about viticultural paradise.

http://www.casalthaulero.it/en/vini/duca-thaulero/ 

I could not resist a glass of Cognac with my coffee but my wife did. We both sipped a glass of Limoncello afterwards. I was mixing it a bit but there were no side effects. I resisted the temptation to hear health warnings ringing in my ears on the walk home as I preferred to sing jazz to myself. It was Christmas, after all , and I did not want to spoil a perfect evening.



If ever you are nearby Orpington then try www.dafabrizio.co.uk/our-location/