Dry January

Good luck to you if you felt compelled not to drink alcohol throughout January - you almost got there.

I have felt no such compulsion. I  simply do not drink too much alcohol and I never intend to do so. I do not take too much notice of government recommendations of what to eat and drink and how much. I know in my own mind that I rarely over indulge and that my drinking is not damaging my health.

The same can be said for my wife. It is clear that certain medical academicians are trying to get the population not to drink alcohol at all. They are constantly bringing the recommendations for how many units we should drink per week down. They are now getting round to suggesting that drinking more than 14 units a week makes you an abuser of alcohol. Such absolutism is tosh. Anyone who is an alcoholic or who has liver disease should not be drinking at all. If I drink 15 units a week it neither makes me an alcoholic nor an abuser of alcohol. I shall decide for myself based on my own health not on the idea of someone who has not even met me.

I drink wine with food and if I am deprived of a few glasses of Bordeaux or Burgundy, or any other good wine, then the quality of my life goes down. The conviviality of sharing a glass or two of wine with my wife and my friends helps to make life worth living for me. Health-puritan bores do not bother me.

2001 Baron d'Aupenac Saint-Chinian Cave de Roquebrun Red

On  Christmas day it was just my wife and me. We decided to cook a rib of beef with a port based sauce and it was delicious. I selected my last bottle of 2001 Baron d'Aupenac Saint-Chinian from the Languedoc to go with it. We ate delicious food and drank tremendous wine - just us two. The joys of a family reunion had to wait for a couple of days.

The Cave de Roquebrun produces some of my favourite red wines. The Baron d'Aupenac is their top red wine and it compares favourably with the best red wines from France. A quick glance at the back label suggested that the wine could be kept for just 10 years but this wine was going strong after 16. There was a lovely flavour of rich ripe red fruits with a hint of oak.The wine was well integrated with soft tannin. It had a full body and was still concentrated and complex and lingered for a very long time on the palate. It had its own unique flavour and it had all the hallmarks of a great wine but at a reasonable price.

The wine was perfect for an intimate Christmas with rib of beef and good English and French cheeses.

If you are in the St Chinian area of southern France then do not hesitate to pay the Cave de Roquebrun a visit. All of their wines are of the highest quality and they are tremendous value for money.  And, they all deserve to be  consumed with the best of food.

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.