Magnificent Madeira... And Sparkling Vodka?

29-Oct-08 - I love Madeira wine, always have. Indeed, in 1989, when I was writing a syndicated weekly column for local papers I confidently predicted that it was ready for a comeback, and that the 1990s would see a resurgence in demand for this fabulous wine. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet. Neither for Sherry, Port or Marsala, all of which I also love, but this is not about my inability to predict what the market will do. I think we can leave that to the financial institutions.

But anyway I was delighted to be invited to the Portuguese ambassador's residence in Belgrave Square (on the next corner from the Spanish Embassy) for a tasting of generic and colheita Madeiras. The day was sunny but cold, and the train was absolutely packed (half term!!). There was a scoutmaster with a gaggle of young scouts who all got a seat, but he didn't, and stood up all the way to Victoria - an hour and a half or more. Sadly, my creaky tin-man joints don't allow that so I travelled in first class. I had my credit-card and ticket ready to pay the difference but the guard lurked in his lobby for the whole journey and never showed his face.

The residence is another one of those grand corner mansions on Belgrave Square with elegant rooms hung with oil-paintings and tapestries, and there were six of the seven Madeira exporting companies present. There was a seminar conducted by Andrew Jefford although I didn't arrive early enough to go to it. However, there was plenty of room (and some nearby seats!) And I got stuck in. This is who was there and their best wines:

Henriques & Henriques (Mentzendorff) - one of the few producers with a substantial plantation of its own vineyards. I have happy memories of visiting there in 1999 for a tasting with chief-exec. John Cossart, who sadly died in February this year at the age of 63. I have only ever given 20/20 to two wines in my life, and one of them was an ancient vintage Madeira from Henriques & Henriques, tasted with John - bottled around 1850 at a time when it was classified as 'very old wine' (more than 50 years old) he calculated that it was probably from the historic 1795 vintage: 204 years old and still going strong. On a side issue, his death came only a month after that of Bill Baker of Reid Wines near Bath (at 53), another robust character: when I joined the wine trade in 1972 it was full of flambuoyant, larger-than-life characters such as they. Today, so much of the trade is 'corporate' men (and women) in suits.

There was none of the 1795 on show on the day but there were some spectacular vintages presided over by the beautiful Elizabeth Ferguson and the feisty Joanna Delaforce of Mentzendorff. My two 18/20 picks here were the 15-year-old Verdelho and the 15-year-old Boal. Both had that characteristic 'toffee-caramel' mid-palate, with more richness in Boal, of course, but the classic Madeira fresh acidity which marks it out from Oloroso Sherry and Marsala. Indeed, I bumped into the fragrant Patricia Stefanowicz of Plumpton College who reminded me of a seminar I'd conducted for the MW students a few years ago, comparing Port, Sherry and Madeira. The question was simply 'how do you distinguish between a sweet Oloroso and a Madeira?' The answer, of course, was acidity, and the freshness of acidity in most of the Madeira wines, especially the more modern styles, was very apparent in the samples on show.

I moved on to the Madeira Wine Company (aka Blandy's - John E. Fells) which was hosted by an old chum, Tim Stanley-Clarke (known to the trade as Tim Standing-Joke) who also represents Bouchard Père-et-Fils in Burgundy and Sir Cliff Richard's Quinta do Moinho estate in southern Portugal. Blandy's is famous for the 'Dukes' range (Clarence, Cumberland, Cambridge and Sussex, which in my day were Malmsey, Boal, Verdelho and Sercial respectively, but have for many years been made with the Tinta Negra Mole). Top picks here were the 1977s: Verdelho (excellent balance, lovely length and a hint of 'gamey' aldehyde) 17/20; and a sublime Bual (wonderful structure and an endless, delicious, rich finish) 18/20.

Onward to Pereira d'Oliveira (boveywines@btconnect.com). I have in my cellar at home a bottle of the 1968 Boal, a gift from the adega when I last visited, and the vintage of the year in which we got married. Although the 40th anniversary has passed (see post passim), we still haven't opened it as Jill is less than enthusiastic about anything sweet. However, Christmas will come and I'm sure that James and Claire will enjoy it. I also seem to remember buying a dozen of those weird hats that the embroidery ladies wear. Not sure what I meant to do with them, but they're still on top of the wardrobe. No less than three 18/20s here: Sercial 1971 (excellent, rich, spicy, long); Terrantez 1977 (big 'savoury' sweetness with a hint of pickled shallot - what was I thinking of when I wrote that? - Magnificent finish); and 1978 Boal (amazingly youthful, fresh and clean acidity and very long). These are fab wines.

Barbeito (Raymond Reynolds) was next. A wonderful selection of wines here including five 18/20s: Sercial 10-year-old (crisp freshness, muted sweetness); Boal 5-year-old (delicate, light, modern, fresh style); Malvasia 20-year-old (lovely, clean, fresh fruit, hot and spicy on the finish); Single Harvest 1997 'medium dry' (lovely, delicious, light, clean sweetness); and Bual 1982 (Gorgeous! Lovely 'sappy' fruit and an intensity akin to that of Rowntrees' Fruit Pastilles, long finish).

Justino Henriques (georgesbarbier@f2s.com) is one of the biggest stockholders on the island and has a range of wines from the affordable to the spectacular. My two best (both 18/20) were the 1996 Harvest (smoky, lovely rich, chocolatey finish); and the Terrantez 1978 (warm, slightly rubbery, coffee-toffee mid-palate and very long).

Finally H.M. Borges (020-8649-8005) - this is a fourth-generation business with some excellent wines, and Senhor Borges was very complimentary about my Portuguese feature in the summer issue of YES CHEF! Magazine (subscribe now!), perhaps because I visited several producers of wine, food and olive oil which he imports into the UK. So, no conflict of interest there, then. I marked two 18/20s - Harvest Sercial 1995 (spicy, fresh, long delicious) and Harvest Boal from the same year (warm, nutty, finishes dry and clean). Just at this point luncheon was announced and the room half emptied. Sr Borges nodded sagely "that'll be the journalists, then: always first for lunch." How do we get this reputation?

I didn't stay for lunch as I had an appointment in Soho to taste a new sparkling vodka (this is not a joke) at 15:00 and hoped that I could pull it forward and so get the train home before 17:00 which is always a nightmare. As it happened, I couldn't, because they'd already made the arrangements, but I made my way to Richmond Mews, just off Dean Street. The local pub had had a credit-card breakdown and were taking cash only (oh horrors - real money!) so I went into the bar of the Soho Theatre which was, rather sadly, all but empty. However, with an hour and a half to kill I enjoyed a large one, an excellent chicken 'sandwich' (actually a fajita-style wrap) with chips and a couple of glasses of the house Merlot (at £3 for a 175 ml glass, quite good value for money in Soho).

The venue was one of those discreetly-luxurious loft apartments inside an outwardly-austere warehouse building, and fortunately had a lift. I was met by Kash Javaid of Essence Communications, and he introduced me to Mattias Lindberger, who is the one of the founders of Camitz Vodka (the company is called Camitz and Lindberger). A bit of background here: Jill and I are both aficionados of vodka, and have worked our way through all the big brands and most of the niche brands (such as those available at the Vintage House in Old Compton Street, which is also where we used to buy our Kentucky Bourbon until they stopped delivering). Overall, and leaving aside a few niche vodkas such as the splendid Luksusowa, we have agreed to differ: her choice is Stolichnaya (wheat) and mine is Wyborowa (rye) but, in either case, a minimum 24 hours in the freezer is required for best effect. We are also purists in the respect that if we want to drink something we want to drink it. We don't want it mixed up with other stuff and especially not in cocktails. If it's worth drinking, then it's worth drinking by itself. (Slight hypocrisy here as Jill does enjoy a gin-and-tonic with ice and lemon as an apéritif and I do enjoy a whisky-and-soda with ice before dinner. In addition we have both been beguiled in the past by a well-made Bloody Mary, but that's all. Anything else, and anything at all containing vermouth, that vilest of drinks, is out).

So, I came to this tasting prepared to dislike Camitz. It was going to be a poncy, overpriced piece of marketing aimed at yuppies with more money than sense who would in any case mix it with something and destroy whatever taste it had. Whether that last thought is true may be a moot point, but I was stopped in my tracks when I actually saw the bottle and tasted the vodka. It's made in Sweden and sprang from an idea five years ago to make Absolut vodka sparkle. Since then, of course Vin & Sprit has sold Absolut to Pernod-Ricard and the whole thing has become impossibly corporate, so Camitz and Lindberger decided to create their own brand. "The sparkle shows up any defects in the spirit" said Mattias "so we had to make sure it was totally pure." They use Scandinavian winter wheat as the base with water from underground springs, and the spirit is distilled five times and then passes through ceramic filters and... Well it's carbonated. I don't know about you but carbonation is something I associate with the cheapest and nastiest sparkling wines, so what could it do for vodka?

Well, I was about to find out. I have to admit that the bottle is beautifully designed and the branding is printed directly on to the glass, rather than on a transparent label. The whole thing has been designed to look, well, spotlessly clean, and it works. It comes in a clear-glass Champagne-type bottle with a Champagne-type cork (interestingly, with a plastic seal on the bottom to keep the spirit away from the cork itself) and a Champagne-type foil capsule. It looks good, it looks quality, and start guessing the price now (Champagne, hint, hint).

All right, so what about the vodka. To my astonishment I found it was excellent: lovely, crisp, clean, fresh, immaculately chilled and unmistakably 'wheaty'. "But what", I hear you cry, "about the sparkle? What does that do for the taste?" Well, just as the sparkle in sparkling wines 'drives' the flavours of the wine, so this does with the basic flavours of the vodka. It's like... This is going to sound very silly. It's like the freshness of good toothpaste first thing in the morning. I don't mean that it tastes like toothpaste, of course, but that the fizz gives a tremendous 'refreshing' lift to the mouth, like well-chilled Manzanilla or Fino. This would make an absolutely splendid apéritif, and lift the spirits on the darkest and most depressing of winter nights.

I wish them all the luck in the world: it's off the wall, delicious, and something very rare - a genuinely new idea; even if those dreaded yuppies will destroy it by drowning it in ghastly Martini. And the price - "around the same as Grey Goose" says Mattias. Work it out for yourself.

Did just managed to catch the 16:17 to Worthing and it was, of course, a sardine tin. For the fourth time this week I sat in first class, credit card in hand, and for the fourth time the guard didn't stray from his cosy cabinet at the back. Pragmatic, I suppose, and I should be grateful, and in any case 'first class' on a Class 377 Southern train is indistinguishable from cattle class except for a white antimacassar, and a socket for your laptop. I slept most of the way home but the day was lifted for me as I stepped on to the platform at Worthing and an attractive young woman accosted me and said "you must be John Radford". I confessed that this was so. "I really enjoy your programme on Splash on a Sunday morning" she replied. A good ending to a long day.

Fame at last!

24-Oct-08 - Got a Google alert this morning leading to the webpage of More Intelligent Life (MIL), the internet offshoot of Intelligent Life Magazine.

In case the link fails or goes out of date, it's an interview with Heston Blumenthal about his love of Sherry as an accompaniment to food by Tom Harrow of MIL, and the relevant paragraph is as follows:

MIL: My first sherry epiphany occurred after Big John Radford [a larger-than-life wine writer/lecturer and bon vivant; the Falstaff of his era] exhorted his diploma students to try a Dry Old Oloroso with their Sunday Roast Beef. It was a revelation - if painful on Monday. When did you first start considering sherry in a non-traditional sense?

It just goes to show that you don't know to whom you're talking at a WSET lecture!

Lunch at Pintxo People, Brighton

23-Oct-08 - I'd heard about it, been recommended to it, and read about it but I didn't actually go there until Thursday, and I was impressed. To fill in the background, ever since I was so brutally stabbed (all right, all right, we know about that. Get on with it! Ed.) well, ever since I left the BBC, about every three or four months I've met up with my old boss, Mike Hapgood, who is now HRLP at Southampton (BBC South) for lunch (see 03-May-08 post for the last one - hmm... Must be five months, then). He happened to be in Brighton on other business so we decided to meet at Pintxo People on Western Road (where Loch Fyne used to be). I liked the look of the place right off - plain wooden tables and floors, newspapers, very informal, very friendly staff, very cold Fino, although a little disappointing that they hadn't got the 20cl bottles of Tío Pepe or El Rocío Manzanilla, both of which were on the list. Indeed, they told me that González Byass had discontinued both (I've written to Martin Skelton to check - he has just replied. It's true. They don't have a bottling line in Sanlúcar and new regulations insist that Manzanilla is bottled there, and the 20cl bottle didn't take off in sufficient quantity, leading to freshness problems). They did, however, have the Fino Romate from Sánchez Romate, which was excellent and served in 10cl measures (a quadruple spirit measure) at £3.50. I'm going to have a beef about that in a minute or two, but not yet. They did throw in a ración of boquerones as an apology.

These lunches are a very relaxed affair, and we talk about the glory days of Southern Counties radio when he was running it and I was on it, but also about everything else, including the food, of course, and he's a big fan of YES CHEF! Magazine - I gave him a copy of the current issue. Big changes are afoot in BBC local radio, with all 41 stations moving from under the aegis of 'BBC Nations and Regions' and into bed with 'BBC News'. What this will mean, nobody seems to know... Or nobody's telling. It would seem to be an opportunity for a good shake-up, however.

Anyway, it was a very convivial lunch and we had five plates of tapas (or pintxos in Basque) although I didn't understand why the place has a Basque name and the menu is mostly in Spanish with a few items in Catalan. No matter, however, the tapas were the best I've eaten outside Spain - indeed, a good deal better than many tapas I've had inside Spain: pan con tomate was truly melt-in-the-mouth delicious, the tortilla de patatas was suitably moist and laced with a touch of ali-oli, gambas al ajillo (possibly my favourite Spanish seafood dish) was exactly right, even the berenjenas (aubergines are not my favourite vegetable) were good, and the patatas bravas came with a separate pot of salsa dip rather than being liberally scattered with it as in most UK tapas bars - lovely stab-it-with-a-stick food.

All in all it was an excellent meal, and just enough for a light lunch. I shall certainly go there again. But now for my beef, and it concerns mark-ups on wine. Every restaurant has its own mark-up policy, usually starting at about 100%, and the higher you go through the stars and rosettes the bigger it gets. You can complain, or you can do what everybody does and go somewhere else. However, my complaint is not about mark-ups per se, but about the fact that Sherry is always marked up higher than any other wine. For example, the Romate Fino at £3.50 for 10cl grosses up to £26.25 a bottle. The wine sells at £5.99 retail, so we may assume that a restaurant gets it for rather less, so let's say £5 for round figures. This represents a mark-up of 525% . Meanwhile Rioja Muga Blanco (to take an example from the list) sells at retail for £8.95, so let's say that the restaurant gets it for £7.50. It sells by the 17.5cl glass for £6, which grosses up to £25.71 a bottle, a mark up of 343%. So why should Sherry be marked up at half as much again? Answers on a postcard?

Mind you, this pales to insignificance compared with an experience I had at a London hotel some years ago. I was with a colleague and she had a glass of the house white (an Australian Chardonnay) which was about £3. I had a Fino and asked for a proper glassful, the same size as my colleague's. It cost £10.50. I knew the approximate price of the wines, which was the same for both, and I calculated that the hotel had a mark-up of 700% on the Sherry but 'only' 300% on the wine. I asked the bar manager how he could justify it and he looked at me rather snottily and said "because everybody else does. It should be 1,000% really". Needless to say I have never set foot in that hotel since. I don't suppose they sell much Sherry, either.

For the record - I love to drink Sherry with food, and not just Spanish food, but a well-chilled Manzanilla with spicy oriental and south American chillis is absolutely perfect. And I'd like to buy it by the bottle, and I'm prepared to pay the same on-the-table price as an equivalent bottle of dry white wine on the same restaurant's list. So if your Oz Chardonnay cost £6 and it's on the list at £18, that's what I'll pay for a bottle of Fino. OK? Fat chance!

Wines of Rueda Tasting, London

21-Oct-08 - To the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, an extremely posh place with a lovely sunny room for a wine tasting: the York Suite is light and airy with plenty of space to move about, in contrast with some of the tastings I've been to over the years. This was a showcase for the wines of Rueda, organised by Gerald Lawson-Tancred of Hispanic Consulting. Eighteen bodegas had booked to exhibit and, on the day, seventeen actually arrived, including several familiar faces: Adrian Hunter from Berkmann (né Laymont & Shaw), Pablo del Villar from Hermanos Villar, the lovely Viki Pariente from José Pariente (née Dos Victorias), the vivacious Manuela Calzado from Grupo Yllera, and the ddg Alejandra Sanz, brother of Ricardo of that ilk from Sitios de Bodega - an offshoot of Castilla la Vieja (see below).

I started off with Viki Pariente (as she was the first to get the bottles open). She founded Bodega Dos Victorias with university friend Victoria Benavides in Rueda, later expanding into Toro but, as of the last vintage, the two have gone their separate ways - the other Victoria taking over the production of red wines in Toro. Viki was showing 2007 José Pariente Verdejo, as it were 'straight' and barrel-fermented, as well as a Sauvignon which she made for the first time last year. All the wines showed extremely well - straight 17s out of 20 - but, oddly, my favourite was 2007 Verdejo barrel-fermented. I say 'oddly' because I don't usually go for barrel-fermented Verdejo, but in this case she has managed to retain all the delicious, fresh, herby fruit of the grape and just given it a 'mantle' of gently-toasty oak. She's represented by Georges Barbier of London.

I went on to taste every wine in the room (some 32 wines), and then retasted those which had got my highest marks (17-18), both on their own and with food (excellent buffet, by the way, and lots of it). These are they:

Agricola Castellana - Berkmann Wine Cellars - 2007 Azumbre Verdejo Ungrafted old vines - all that fresh fruit but with real 'backbone' - 17/20 (18 with food).

Avelino Vegas - PLB wines - 2007 Montespina Verdejo - long, sappy, spicy, herby, delicious - 18/20; 2007 Sauvignon - good, ripe big Sauvignon style with a 'meaty' mid-palate - 17/20.

Félix Sanz - 2007 Viña Cimbrón Verdejo - 'a lovely three-dimensional style', I wrote in my notes, excellent structure and length - 18/20.

François Lurton - 2007 Cuesta de Oro Verdejo barrel-fermented - yes, another woody wonder, but that 'meaty' mid-palate with warmth and ripeness - 17/20 (18 with food).

Matarromera - Premier Vintners - 2007 Emina Sauvignon - just beautifully clean, fresh and delicious. A real swiggeroon - 17/20.

Castilla la Vieja - C&D Wines - 2007 Palacio de Bornos, both 'straight' and barrel-fermented - I have admired both these wines for years: impeccable winemaking by Antonio Sanz, lovely fruit, and delicious - both 17/20.

Gótica - 2007 Trascampanas Verdejo and Sauvignon - two beautifully-made wines, the Verdejo rich and spicy, the Sauvignon with lovely 'soft' fruit and excellent length.- both 18/20.

Naia - 2006 Naiades Verdejo barrel-fermented - astonishing power and weight for a Verdejo wine, but balanced out by the judicious use of oak. Splendid - 18/20.

Javier Sanz - 2007 Villa Narcisa Verdejo both 'straight' and barrel-fermented (old vines) - lovely 'honeyed' tones from the former and smoky-oaky complexity from the latter - both 17/20.

Sitios de Bodega - 2007 Con Class ('straight') and V3 Verdejo barrel-fermented (old vines - 80-100 years) - both wines immaculately made by Ricardo Sanz. Con Class teases out the richness of the fruit, and V3 has a subtle but pervading richness with those 'petrolly' old-vines hints - both 17/20.

Oh, and if there seem to be a lot of Sanzs in Rueda, that's because family members keep setting up in business for themselves: Antonio seceded from his father's business to set up Castilla la Vieja, and his son and daughter Ricardo and Alejandra did the same in 2004. According to Alejandra their father is "not in a position to criticise us for doing the same as he did!" Only Javier Sanz (above) is not related.

It seems churlish to leave out so many wines, to the vast majority of which I gave 16, but there are limits to space, even on a blog. Suffice it to say that the day confirmed my thoughts that Rueda is now unquestionably producing wine of world-class quality as a matter of course, and doing it with a native Spanish grape variety, to which I say 'hurrah!'

Hastings - National Town Criers Championship 2008

18-Oct-08 - The sky was still clear and blue and the sun was bright, but an increasingly cold wind from the sea did make me wish I'd worn something warmer than a short-sleeved shirt. This was Hastings, indeed the culmination of Hastings Week which is held every year to commemorate the battle which took place on the 14th October, 1066, and in 2008 it ran from the 11th to the 19th October. The Saturday is always the day for the National Town Criers' Championship, which has been held (give or take the odd war, hiatus and lapse of sponsorship) in the town since 1937, and this was the 56th event in that 71-year history. I've judged there for most of the past ten years, along with Jill (who is, of course, professionally qualified in such matters) and Terry James from Arrow FM, and the rules have stayed more or less the same all along. Town criers from all over the country (in this case from Somerset to Yorkshire) come to Hastings, dress up in their full finery and perform their cry in two heats, one with a welcome message from their home town, and one on a specific subject which, this year, was the 2012 Olympic Games.

There have a been a few tweaks since I first went. The competition used to beheld in the ruins of the castle, but then moved to the Priory Meadow shopping centre which provides a built-in audience of Saturday shoppers and is, of course, much closer to the reality of where a traditional town crier would have worked: the ambient noise level is high, which is a useful test of the crier's ability. For several years we, the judges, were screened off from the participants in case we were swayed by the finery, but over the past two years we have been allowed to look at them - there's a separate judge who adjudicates on matters of costume and bearing. There are prizes for the winner and three runners-up, plus a prize for the best costume and the best-dressed consort - most criers have an 'other half' with them.

Promenading before the final heat

On the day there were 18 finalists - there had been 24, but complications prevented six of them from attending - including three women, and we were marking them on volume, diction, clarity and inflection. The women were excellent, particularly Doris Eastwood from Langton Herring, near Weymouth in Dorset, who's been a finalist for several years but, sadly, they can't really compete with the men in terms of volume, and if we can't hear 'em we can't mark 'em. Several former champions were represented, including Michael Wood from East Yorkshire who won in 2000 (he came 4th this year) and Alistair Chisholm of Dorchester who, not content with being five-times champion in 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2007, went on to win again this year. What's the secret? It's being able to project without shouting, phrasing without becoming inaudible, and getting the pace right. The man is truly a champion. The prizes were presented by the Mayor of Hastings, Maureen Charlesworth.

Alistair Chisholm at work on his home turf.
Pic.: www.dorchestertowncrier.co.uk

I must just say a word about lunch - we were uncomfortable about having lunch with the participants, with judging still to come in the afternoon, and sloped of to the pub instead. We usually go to the Havelock on Havelock Road, but this time we decided to try the Clarence on Middle Street. We'd looked in the previous year and weren't impressed, but it seems to have changed hands, and now has an outside seating area, which was very pleasant in the sunshine, as was their all-day full English breakfast (for £3.95). This and a bottled of Crooked Vine Sauvignon grossed up to about £18 for both of us: excellent value. The wine wasn't really chilled properly but the barmaids were so wonderfully pretty that I didn't seek to complain.

Also a word of compliment to the organisers in Hastings Borough Council, particularly Kevin Boorman and Debbie Clifford, who are on hand every year to make sure that things run smoothly, and not just on the day itself. Getting everything organised from the catering to the accommodation for the participants must almost be a full-time job.

Bolney Wine Estate

17-Oct-08 - A glorious autumn day: the sky cloudless and periwinkle blue, the sun bright and even quite warm if you're standing in it, and all of us asking where this weather was three months ago when the children were still on holiday from school. Oh, well...

There are few places as pleasant to be on such a day as an English vineyard, and such an one is what used to be called Booker's Vineyard in the village of Bolney in West Sussex. They're changing the name to the Bolney Wine Estate to avoid confusion with Bookers Cash and Carry Group, and it was the last day of the 2008 vintage.

The village of Bolney first, though: we got married in the summer of 1968, but in the first week of January we took a holiday to the south coast. We'd stayed with friends in London, and drove down the old A23 (before the present dual carriageway) towards Brighton, in no particular hurry. Mid-evening we decided to call in somewhere for a drink and discovered the Bolney Stage, an old coaching inn on what was then the main Brighton Road. I remember particularly the warmth inside on a cold night, a barrel of real ale on the bar, well-filled ham sandwiches and free peanuts (they go extremely well on a ham sandwich - I offered to buy some but the barman said they only gave them away), after which we continued on our journey to Brighton. We had excellent memories of that visit, and, only about 20 years later, I was on my way to the Devil's Dyke for a corporate day out and called in again (by this time the new road had been built and the pub was, effectively, on a side road). Little had changed, except that the bar had moved to the other side of the room and there were no ham sandwiches. I 'phoned Jill to let her know where I was, but I think she was unimpressed, as she wasn't there as well. My third visit was a mere 10 years later, when we were house-hunting on the south coast and, on the way back towards London, we called in again. By this time the Stage had taken on a rather dilapidated look - you know how it is when you go into a pub and somehow know that it's for sale? I looked it up on the internet and found that, indeed, it was - for something around £225,000, which was well out of our budget range in 1997 (probably just as well). It's now been smartened up and taken over by a small local chain called Blubeckers, and I popped round to see it although I didn't have time to make my fourth visit in 40 years. The memories of 1968 remain strong, however.

The Bolney Stage today

But anyway, back to the Bolney Wine Estate at the end of the 2008 harvest. The pickers were gathering the last of the Pinot Noir as our group was shown round by Duncan Monro, who freelances as a guide during the season. His knowledge is comprehensive, and he explained everything very thoroughly. The estate has 18 acres (7.3 hectares - sorry, I can only think in metric when it comes to vineyards) with a further 15 recently planted, which will make a total of 13.4 hectares when the vines come to maturity. Yield is more or less three tonnes per acre (to cut out the maths, that's about 50 hl/ha) and I was able to interview the winemaker, Samantha Linter, about the new vintage. Interestingly, as it turned out, I had been one of her lecturers when she was doing her diploma at Plumpton College. She was up to her neck in crushing and fermentation but took a few minutes out for a chat (this will be broadcast on Splash FM on Sunday 9th November) and she seemed very positive about the new vintage: although we had a relatively sunless summer, average temperatures were quite warm, and a help to slow but effective ripening, such that some varieties didn't need any chaptalisation.

Samantha Linter at work in the winery

After the tour we headed back to the visitor centre, which is a pleasant, airy, conservatory-type building, for the tasting. On the regular tour visitors get to taste four of the wines, but production is so small that some of the wines sell out very quickly. As with all English vineyards, there is not one jot of support from the government, and the wines pay the same taxes and duty as imported wines (this is not the case in other European countries), so price is always a critical factor, but even so there is value to be had and, on our visit, two or three wines were no longer available. The estate's policy is to sell all its wines as 'regional' even though they qualify for QWPSR status. The UK, however, has only two QWPSR zones ('England' and 'Wales'), and Bolney want to emphasise that this is Sussex wine, so they are bottled as 'Sussex Regional Wine', which legally ranks alongside the European Vin de Pays/Indicazione Geogràfica Tìpica/Vino de la Tierra etc. These are the wines we tasted:

1) Autumn Spice 2007 - 11.5% abv - £7.95 - Müller-Thurgau/Schönberger/Wurzer

Almost colourless//gentle, spicy, aromatic//very clean, crisp, delicious, bone dry but with a hint of aromatic fruit, crisp acidity on finish. Very pleasant. This is their best-selling white wine.

2) Dark Harvest 2004 - 11% abv - £7.95 - Rondo/Dornfelder - £7.95

Light purple//some dark, damsony fruit, hint of wood//some fresh tannins on mid-palate, clean, delicate, 'stone-fruit' style. Very light and a bit austere on the finish. This is their best-selling red.

3) Blackbird Merlot - 2006 - 12% abv - £9.99

Light purple//dark, liquorice, rather austere, slight 'clinical' hints//very austere tannins, but good structure and there is some complexity on the finish. The first vintage of Merlot was in 2005, and at that time it wasn't a permitted variety in English vineyards, so they had to call it Blackbird (merle, geddit?). Now, however, Merlot is a permitted variety, hence the expanded name.

4) Bolney Bubbly 2006 - 12.5% abv - £15.00 - Seyval Blanc with 12 months on the lees. Residual sugar 12 g/l.

Very pale straw, almost colourless, modest mousse//'chalky' aromas, hint of sweetness - almost honeyed//but good, bone dry, and fairly hefty on mid-palate. Nice, fresh, crisp finish.

5) Pinot Noir 2006 - 12% abv - £9.99

Pale ruby//lovely classic cool-climate Pinot Noir nose, almost musky, beeswax//rather austere on foretaste but some lipsmacking fruit on the mid-palate. Gentle, aromatic finish. This has sold out but they managed to find a bottle from the secret store.

Duncan explained that, although it's sparkling English wine which is making the headlines (and they produce four sparklers here) their main interest is in red wines, which is something of a departure in England. Samantha firmly believes that Pinot Noir is the one to watch for the future and, on this showing, it seems to have considerable potential.

This was an excellent day out, even though I couldn't stay for lunch, and I also swapped a technical spreadsheet with Samantha for a bottle of Bart's Bubbly Rosé sparkling, which is currently in the fridge awaiting further investigation.

The last Pinot Noir of summer

Douro Wines in Brighton/Spanish Embassy in London

14-Oct-08 - Excellent tasting of Douro wines (which seem to be flavour of the month: there's another one next week in London) at the Hotel du Vin in Brighton. This was an excellent opportunity to taste a range of wines from this very up-and-coming area - and to experience an excellent lunch as well, in contrast with other meals I've had at various Hotels du Vin since the chain was established.

My first experience of the red wines of the Douro (as opposed to Port) was at the IFE when it used to be at Olympia, about 25 years ago. There was a small stand in the wine section with wines in those traditional, opaque, almost black Port bottles and they were, quite frankly, dreadful. A bit of research revealed that the wines tended to be made from grapes which were 'not good enough for Port' which speaks volumes, of course. Since then a great deal of research has taken place and, indeed, higher vineyards have proved to be ideal for sourcing grapes for wine, whilst the lower vineyards, basking in the heat of summer, produce the best grapes for Port.

I've been to the Douro twice this year and been increasingly impressed by the wine, red and white and the enormous leap in quality that's happened over the past few years. In June I visited Wine & Soul in Vale de Mendiz, about ten minutes north of Pinhão, and tasted their 'garage' wines. This tiny winery is owned by ddg ex-model Sandra Tavares da Silva and her husband Jorge Serôdio Borges, both of whom work as consultant winemakers for other wineries (Jorge at Quinta do Passadouro, see below), but have set up this tiny business for themselves. They make the wine in the old-fashioned way in stone lagares but also have a barrel-fermented white called Guru, and their red is called Pintas. They make a vintage Port as well (but no other styles of Port) and the quality throughout is spectacular.

Me, Sandra Tavares da Silva and Jorge Serôdio Borges
at Wine & Soul. Pic: 'Yes Chef!' magazine.

My second visit to Portugal (courtesy of François Lurton) included a visit to the Mateus Palace near Vila Real. You may have seen it on the labels of Mateus Rosé but the wine they make in the winery there has never been pink and fizzy. The story goes that when Mateus Rosé was 'invented' just after the second world war, the producers thought the palace would look nice on the label, and they asked the Morgado ('squire') of Mateus if they could use it. They offered a one-off payment or a royalty on every bottle sold. The Morgado tasted the wine and opted for the one-off payment. By the late 1980s Mateus was selling some 40 million bottles a year. Anyway, on our visit there was a tasting of the range of wines being produced by Lavradores de Feitoria, a consortium of 15 independent Quintas in the Douro. The wines were particularly good, and I asked the fabulously attractive Olga Martins, who does their marketing, to send me some samples for a less frenetic tasting. I'll let you know when they arrive.

Forward, then, to last Tuesday when the Port and Douro Wine Institute (via Westbury Communications) held a tasting and lunch at the Hotel du Vin in Brighton. This again was a showcase for some of the splendid new-wave wines which are now coming on to the market. A few of them are, shall we say, rather ambitiously priced, but the quality is formidable. I won't go through the whole lot but my top marks (17-18) went to the following:

Drink Me 2006, Niepoort - £9.99 - Ruby//nice warm spicy, some wood//v. clean, well structured, big tannins but big fruit also. Very stylish and elegant finish, long. 17

Duas Quintas Reserva 2004 - £22.00 - Dark ruby//lovely perfumed nose, style, character//very elegant balance. Some wood evident and balanced tannins. Clean, crisp fruit. Good: should develop well. 17

Redoma Tinto 2002, Niepoort - £27.50 - Dark ruby//big, ripe, slightly oily, some smoke and dark fruit//yes! Good big upfront fruit but there's some powerful extraction. Excellent length. 17

Quinta do Passadouro 2005 - £14.19 - Very dark ruby//big warm spice but a lot of subtle fruit//big structure, power, a good tannin/fruit integration. Long, austere at the moment but should mellow. 17

Quinta do Passadouro 2006 - £14.99 - Ruby//lots of spicy oak, fruit coming though, elegant//big tannins but the fruit is there, although rather occluded at the moment. Very austere finish. Tremendous potential 17.

Quinta do Passadouro Reserva 2005 - £27.69 Ruby//warm 'rubber' - austere, clean//big fruit, extraction, structure. Big tannins but the whole thing is working well. Long. 18

Escada red 2005, DFJ Vinhos - £12.99 - Purple/ruby//another 'rubbery' example, bonfire smoke//lovely clean, fresh fruit, tannins kick in on mid-palate. Still rather austere on length. 17

We tasted them again with lunch, which has restored my faith in the Hotel du Vin - in the past I've never been very impressed with the food, although I can't say that I've been that often. However, this was a sensible and simple meal: chicken-liver and foie-gras parfait with onion marmalade and toasted brioche; roast sirloin of beef on crushed new potatoes with a Douro jus; and a selection of cheeses with celery, biscuits and grapes. Just perfect for matching with the wines. I think the Passadouro Reserva did it for me... But at £27.69.

Then it was off to the Spanish embassy in London to join the diplomatic corps for the celebration of Spain's National Day, which is actually on the 12th, but that was a Sunday. Also known as Hispanic Day and Columbus Day, it commemorates the day in 1492 on which, according to his ship's log, Columbus first set foot in the Americas.

There's a thriving diplomatic circuit in London in which embassies typically invite their colleagues round for suitable celebrations on their various national days, and Spain's is always one of the best, as it's held in the Ambassador's residence, a magnificent town house on the corner of Belgrave Square and Chesham Place. The house was built in 1834 and originally the home of the Chairman of the White Star Line, of Titanic fame. Spain acquired the house in 1928 and did extensive refurbishment, with the result that it was restored to its early-Victorian magnificence. The rooms are opulently furnished, grand in scale with pillared porticoes, fabulous paintings and huge, plump, comfortable sofas. We met the Ambassador, Don Carles Casajauna, and his wife Doña Margarita Massanet, as well as senior Embassy staff, and I was fascinated to see that security was being provided by three officers of the Guardia Civil, in full dress uniform including the traditional black 'tricorn' hat.

As ever, the tapas were splendid and the wines flowed freely: I did some fairly serious damage to the Freixenet vintage over the next hour before having to leave to catch my train. Interestingly, there were people still coming in as I went out: as I said, it's a very popular event, and rather busier than my last visit, which was a private dinner with friends and family to celebrate my winning the Premio Especial Alimentos de España in 2006. Happy days!

Asturias Week in London

09-Oct-08 - To my shame, I have visited sixteen of Spain's seventeen autonomous regions, but never Asturias. This is probably because, until a few years ago, it didn't have any wine regions, and even now it's only got the VdlT Cangas de Narcea, which is, to say the least, relatively obscure. What it does have is some of Spain's greatest cheeses, and the local cider - sidra de Asturias - is legendary throughout Spain, with its own rituals and traditions: you don't just pour it into glass and drink it. Asturias has also got some of Spain's most spectacular north-coast scenery, including the stunning Picos de Europa, and some of the cleanest beaches in Europe. It also has a Prince: the heir-apparent to the Spanish throne is always styled Principe de Asturias, in much the same way that the heir apparent to the British throne is styled 'Prince of Wales'.

Anyway, I was invited to a dinner at Ibérica, the newly-opened restaurant on Great Portland Street, to meet Nacho Manzano, chef of the family-owned Casa Marcial Restaurant in Arriondo, about 65 km south-east of Gijón and the same distance east of Oviedo. Nacho has a Michelin star in spite of the fact that he never trained outside of Asturias (never mind outside of Spain), and learned at his father's knee, and at Casa Victor in Gijón before returning to take over the range. There'll be a full interview with him in an upcoming issue of YES CHEF! Magazine.

Ibérica is on a grand scale, on the corner of Great Portland Street and Devonshire Street, and incorporates a deli, bar, bookshop and (upstairs) a restaurant, in which this dinner was to be the inaugural event. It's run by Marcos Fernández Pardo and aims to be London's premier Spanish venue (something of an ambition given the recent upswing in interest in Spanish cuisine) but it's very smart and minimalist and I consumed my fair share of jamón (Teruel, Salamanca and Jabugo) with several copitas of Tío Pepe during the interview.

The menu looked promising, but the timing didn't: the invitation was 7:00 for 7:30 pm but we were, of course, on Mediterranean time so we didn't sit down until 8:30, and the aperitivo arrived just before 9:00 - a delicious mini-revuelto of Cabrales and onion on a maize torto. Next up was roast foie-gras with mountain herbs on a brioche with a sardine and its skin. One taste of this was enough, quite frankly. Sardines are something I can well do without. Next up, according to the menu, were autumn wild mushrooms with 'woodland' sauce and chopped apple and chestnut, followed by crunchy pork with a vinaigrette of fresh vegetables and bean soup, then seabass with a herb gel, then, well, lots of other stuff, but I can't tell you about them because I had to leave after the sardine thing (at about 10:00 pm) to get a cab to Victoria. I just caught my train and got home a few minutes before midnight. Maybe it was a good dinner. I don't know. And it's a great pity because I really was keen to try Nacho's food.

The only upside was that I sat next to the lovely María-José Sevilla of ICEX and the feisty Anne Dolamore of Grub Street publishers. Perhaps we shall meet again in more relaxed circumstances. One of my dearest wishes, when dining in London, is that the main course will arrive before my cab does. It's only happened three times in the past two years (one of them last week at the Knorr dinner, see below). That's why I always try only to do lunch in London.

Durrington High School: Rotary Young Chef of the Year.

08-Oct-08 - Just in case you missed out on this particular competition (amongst the many others) it's an initiative by Rotary clubs up and down the country to encourage young people (age 12-15) to take an interest in cooking, with an emphasis on healthy and affordable food. It starts in local schools, progresses to a regional heat, and then goes forward to a national final, and this was the first heat, in the Food Technology department of Durrington High: a magnificent complex of three rooms each with cookers, sinks, fridges and working-surface workstations. The contestants had to cook a main course and, a week later, a dessert, ideally using locally available and seasonal ingredients. I was invited to take part by Andy Sparsis of the Proto Restaurant Group (who has generously sponsored my radio programme on Splash FM for the past 2 years), who was the chief judge, assisted by his head chef Stuart Slevin. What we were looking for in the participants was more than just the quality of the food and the originality of the recipe, but also their style: creativity, hygiene, presentation, enthusiasm, and indefinable quality of ambition - are they prepared to go out on a limb to create something really different?

The main course event was the previous week with 18 participants and some seriously ambitious recipes. Particularly memorable for me were home-made lamb-burgers, some excellent pasta dishes, and a fillet of cod on pea purée with deep-fried battered parsnip. The hardest thing, as ever was to choose the final eight to go through to the dessert round the following week. In the end both Andy and I chickened out and let Stuart read the list. By this time the room was full of parents and we were worried that we might be in trouble but, of course, this is Worthing and everything was very polite and civilised. Andy dropped me at FOOD restaurant, where Jill was dining with our neighbour Sheila, as a thanks for looking after the house for us when we're away. I joined them but, having just sampled 18 main courses, I contented myself with a cold beer (and a bottle of Muscadet - Château la Touche. I'll tell you about that one day). I did manage a small sandwich before going to bed.

The following week it was the final eight with their desserts. The style ranged from good old-fashioned home cooking (apple crumble with cinnamon and custard!) To some pretty impressive ideas. In the event and after even more headbanging between us, we came up with the two who will go forward to the regional final in January next year. First was Jack Bowden, aged 13, who turned out in full chef's whites, check trousers and skull cap and produced a dark chocolate and raspberry confection served in giant teacups, with fabulous scroll biscuits and fresh cream. The biscuits were the clincher: beautifully crisp on the outside and meltingly soft within. Second was 14-year-old Serena Jayne Moriarty, who won the Guild of Food Writers Cookit! competition for young chefs earlier this year, and was featured on my programme on Splash FM in June. She produced an ice dessert with fresh raspberries on shortbread which was superb but suffered a bit of a collapse under the lights. However, she had scored so highly on the main course night that she, too went through to the next round. It was (yes, yes, cliché alert) a pity that we had to reject anybody after such a magnificent effort, but that is life. All the finalists got a copy of the latest issue of YES CHEF! Magazine (now available in a newsagent near you) and Jack and Serena got a signed copy of COOK ESPAÑA, DRINK ESPAÑA! (now available in a bookshop near you). Both of them had told us that they wanted to be chefs when they grow up, and we wished them all the luck in the world. It is so reaffirming to see young people so dedicated to the craft. More on the competition after the next round in January.

Restaurant Show/Knorr Chef of the Year

07-Oct-08 - The Restaurant Show. A busy day as always on the YES CHEF! stand at the show, with Sue Prain and Laura selling mags and subscriptions. The current issue (number 7) features Paul Bocuse on the cover, and I think that helped: when you're dealing with professionals they like a familiar face. I had time to have a chat with Simon Harris of Barry-Callebaut about the UK heat of the World Chocolate Masters, which had taken place the previous day, and Mark Tilling of Lainston House near Winchester for the second year running was crowned the UK's Chocolate Master. He goes forward to the world final in a year's time at the Paris Expo.

I also managed to catch up with some old friends. Janet Burns (of Cognac trip fame - see previous posts) was hosting the Jacquart Champagne pavilion, which provided much-needed refreshment, and many of the 'usual suspects' were taking advantage of the hospitality but that is, of course, what the Show is all about. I must say it is so much easier to get to Earl's Court than Excel, and the venue worked extremely well.

After the Restaurant Show it was off to the Park Lane Hotel for the Knorr National Chef of the Year Awards. The invitation had indicated 'carriages at 01:30' and I'd booked a car home for that time (at £85 it's cheaper than a hotel room in London and it doesn't condemn you to wasting half a day the following morning simply getting back home). Having said that, I had a panicky 'phone-call from the cab company asking me to confirm exactly where the hotel was: apparently they'd looked it up on the web and discovered that there are three hotels in London called 'The Park Lane', none of which, confusingly, is on Park Lane. The one in question is, of course, on Piccadilly but near to the corner of Old Park Lane (i.e. before the dual-carriageway traffic schemes of the 1960s).

I arrived early, nevertheless, and ensconced myself in the Palm Court. I ordered a couple of large ones over the next hour, while I looked at the menu and had a good laugh at the prices they charge for a sandwich (about £12), The smile faded from my lips when I got the bill for the drinks: a large one in the Palm Court is £14. All right, it's a very elegant place and the service is impeccable, but... How very different from the Eversley.

Anyway, dinner stated on time in the ballroom, with intros, speeches and TV cameras, follower-spots, and a focus on the finalists, who had slaved away under the judges' scrutiny earlier in the day: David Kennedy of the Black Door in Newcastle, Steve Allen of Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, Frederick Forster of Le Boudin Blanc in London, Clark Crawley, sous chef at Barclays Wealth in London, Simon Hulstone of The Elephant in Torquay, Ian Boden of Limes in Derby, Andreas Wingert of Lucknam Park, and Brian Canale of Heritage Portfolio in Edinburgh. They all hosted a table, and we waited for the show to start.

Dinner was very good. I've been to so many of these mega set-piece banquets when the kitchen patently couldn't cope with the numbers (about 300 at my estimate), but this one could and did: the secret is obviously to keep the menu simple, with dishes that can be partly pre-prepared and served, but to make it look good. These sound rather grand, but look behind the name and you'll see that they have been very cleverly selected. We kicked off with bouillabaisse of Norwegian halibut and Langoustine with Errazuriz Max Reserva Chardonnay 2006 (all the wines were supplied by Errazuriz), which was an excellent start. Next up was Jerusalem artichoke velouté with a cèpe mushroom and parmesan crostini, and Max Reserva Merlot 2006. The main course was roast loin and haunch of Denham estate venison, hot pot, fig and Madeira sauce, smoked sea-salt parsnip purée and a pomme soufflé with Max Reserva Cabernet-Sauvignon 2006. This was something of a tour-de-force. Pudding was salted caramel and milk chocolate mousse, pear and vanilla sorbet with late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc 2006. The wine wasn't quite sweet enough to complement the dish, but after such a well-planned meal I wasn't in the mood for complaining. I love to watch the food and beverage service at these events: planned like a military operation, plates arrive as if by magic as the staff weave effortlessly around each other, zigzagging between the tables. Beverage service was excellent: after pouring the wines the sommeliers left the bottles on the table. I admire good service, but when it comes to the wine, I prefer self-service!

Coffee and petits-fours followed, along with the real business of the evening - the awards. There were awards for starter, main course, dessert, and others, but the main thing, of course, was Knorr Chef of the Year. It was, by all accounts, a hard-fought battle and, by chance I was sharing a table with the winning candidate - Simon Hulstone, chef-patron of The Elephant in Torquay. This is a man who, at only 34, seems to be destined for greatness. He was the winner of the Roux scholarship in 2003, training with Martin Berasategui in San Sebastian; he won a gold medal in the World Chef Championships in France, he won a Michelin star for his restaurant in 2006, and has three AA rosettes. As if this were not enough, he's representing Britain at the Bocuse d'Or finals in France in January, 2009. Part of the Knorr prize is a cheque for £10,000 and, as his hands became increasingly full on stage he passed it to his (gorgeous) wife Katy. It wasn't a real one, of course, but for a moment it looked as if she was going to drop it - but I don't think any woman has ever lost anything as valuable as that. There'll be more about Simon in a future issue of YES CHEF!

Simon also won the 'best dessert award'; second was Clark Crawley who also won 'best starter' , and third was David Kennedy who also won 'best main course'.

Simon Hulstone (centre) with (left>right) Craft Guild of Chefs Chairman Nick Vadis; David Mulcahy, Vice-President, Craft Guild of Chefs; and Simon Marshall, Managing Director of Unilever Food Solutions. Pic.: www.bighospitality.co.uk

On the whole it was a very good evening, marred by only two things for me. First the Gents is up 44 stairs to the foyer and there's no lift (actually, there is a lift, but "it's only for the staff, sir" - I think someone has their priorities askew, here). Second, the thing was so well organised that it was all over by 11:30 p.m., and if I were a conspiracy theorist I'd say that the fact that the bar was open until 02:00 am was the real reason for the 'carriages at 01:30' mention on the invitation. By this time, however, my cab had already left Worthing and so there was nothing to do but, er, well, go back to the Palm Court. I tried to economise with a small beer, but even that was a fiver. Ho hum. The cab arrived on time and I got home for about 03:00 am. Early-morning shades of the BBC days when, after 12 years of getting up at 04:00 am I was callously and brutally stabbed in the back by a useless, failed... (You've done this, Ed.).

Jeremy Watson's 70th

05-Oct-08 - Jeremy Watson and I go back a long way: to the early 1970s in fact, when we were both in the wine trade. I was general manager of Vintage Wines Ltd. in Nottingham, and he was running an importing firm in Gerrard's Cross called Pengallic Wines. We had been selling 2-litre bottles of Campo Viejo Rioja (for £1.49!) And the restaurant trade just loved it. This was the era of the red-and-white checked tablecloth with an empty Chianti fiasco in the middle with a candle in it, and the Rioja botellone was even better for the purpose (the wine was pretty good, too, which was a help). We didn't sell enough to ship directly ourselves, and we bought the Rioja from a firm called Daims Ltd. in London, who got in to a bit of bother with Customs and Excise and were forced to close. Whilst still scratching our heads over how to replace it, our Sherry supplier, David Trimby, visited. He'd got some wine from La Mancha in large bottles wrapped around with wicker baskets. They weren't really as attractive as the Rioja, and the wine wasn't as good, but the price was right and we were getting desperate, so the boss, Reg Haward, gave him a provisional order and David promptly took him out to lunch - this was the era when wine-trade lunches lasted about three hours. During that three hours a young chap came into the shop and introduced himself as Jeremy Watson. I say 'young' - although he's older than me, Jeremy has always had the irritating habit of looking at least 20 years younger than he actually is. Anyway I invited him in and we opened a bottle, and he told me that he'd just taken over the Campo Viejo agency, and we were on his list as a past customer. I asked for a quote and a sample (although we knew the wine intimately) and, to cut a long story short, it was the start of a long term relationship between our two companies (David was miffed about having his order cancelled, but he was still supplying our Don Quixote Sherry, which was then a fabulous range blended for us by Lustau). I went solo in 1975 and continued to do business with him, as he moved from Gerrard's Cross to Paddington in London (the shop now occupied by Moreno's), and we met at wine-trade functions and tastings.

In 1981 I started my first regular wine column (in the Coventry Evening Telegraph), and soon syndicated it to, at one time, half a dozen other papers. I wrote regularly about Spanish wine as it wasn't fashionable at the time and I thought it represented excellent value for money. Then one day in 1986 I was at the London Wine and Spirit Trade Fair at Olympia and was approached by Tony Lord, the then editor of Decanter magazine. He asked me to write a piece on the wines of La Mancha and Valdepeñas, and said that what was then called Vinos de España would be in touch about flights and accommodation. In the event, I received a letter from them signed by the director - one Jeremy Watson. Somehow I hadn't clocked that he'd sold up and gone to work for the Spanish Embassy Commercial Office (now known as ICEX). I duly went with a small party to La Mancha, the trip was very useful, I wrote the piece, and got paid, but most importantly I was back in touch with Jeremy again. Apparently Vinos de España (which had now become Wines from Spain - WfS) had been getting press cuttings of my various columns, and in 1988 Jeremy approached me to bring the Spanish Wine Education Notes up to date. They'd been done sporadically over the years, and there was a fair amount on Rioja, Navarra and Sherry, but not a lot else. One way and another I visited, trekked through uncharted areas and discovered wines that had hardly been heard of outside their native regions - the brief from WfS was that the Notes had to be comprehensive and include all the QWPSR wines in Spain, of which there were 34 in 1989 (there are now 75). The book proved popular with the trade and students, and I did updates on it at approximately two-year intervals thereafter (until 2001, when it was moved to the web). This meant quite a few trips to Spain, often with Jeremy, and we spent many nights in jazz bars and enjoyed a lot of very late dinners, most notably when visiting Vinos de Madrid and Méntrida (both hardly known outside Spain) in 1995, and Mallorca in 1996. I was driving up the coast from Málaga visiting all the DO zones I hadn't got to before, and he'd just moved to Pollença, so I'd arranged to fly over from Barcelona, visit the DO Binissalem (then the only one in the Balearics) and stay over with him. He was renting a lovely old house with a roof terrace which we found with some difficulty (James was with me) and this was the first time I'd met the gorgeous Margaret Schellerup, whom Jeremy had recently met and who from then on has been his 'other half'. They moved to Rioja some time later and then back to Dorset, and it was Margaret who'd made all the arrangement for his 70th birthday party, along with Jeremy's son Barnaby, whose company does catering business at the Royal Overseas League.

The weather was miserable but the Hall of India and Pakistan was warm and welcoming, and Jeremy was there, glass in hand, and looking, of course, about 50. There were some 90 of us and we were entertained by a jazz trio and served canapés with Marqués de Monistrol Cava Rosé and Pazo de Seoan Albariño. There were quite a number of familiar faces - old stagers from the trade, of course, former colleagues, friends and, inevitably, half-remembered faces to which I couldn't put a name. The meal was excellent, and simple: roast fillet of beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes with baby roast vegetables in a red wine and wild mushroom jus - a typical English Sunday lunch, indeed. And washed down with a classic Sunday Lunch wine - Marqués de Riscal Reserva 2003: splendid. Cheese followed: truckle Stilton and Double Gloucester with Muscatel grapes and walnut and raisin bread... And more Rioja. At some point around here Jeremy ceremonially cut the birthday cake to bursting flashbulbs (yes, I know they don't do that any more but it sounds better than 'electronically-generated high-intensity flash'), a chorus of 'Happy Birthday' and a vigorous round of applause. We went back to lemon tart with mixed berries and clotted cream. Margaret had, very wisely, hired an entertainer to keep the children happy while the rest of us lingered over coffee and birthday cake, reminiscences, anecdotes and memories. It was a lovely occasion, and good to see Jeremy looking so well and Margaret radiant, as always.

Jeremy and Margaret

'The Magic of Montilla'

28/29-Sep-08 - Bristol and Montilla PX. It's always a pleasure to go to Bristol: many years ago I worked for a company there, although we only went down once a week (or less) for board meetings. However, a great deal has changed since then. I took the up train on Sunday afternoon to Victoria and then across to Paddington for the Temple Meads train. I don't know why but Paddington trains to Bristol are always absolutely packed, so travelling on a Sunday you can take advantage of the 'weekend first' upgrade (a bargain at £10), and the client, Focus PR, who are handling the Montilla PX account, had fixed me up at the Thistle hotel so I would be ready for an early (10:00 am) start on the Monday morning. The Thistle is comfortable if a bit labyrinthine, and room service is excellent: Jill had packed me up with some pastrami sandwiches (have I mentioned the fabulous pastrami from the Cheshire Smokehouse before?) and I sent down for a large glass of the house Merlot, a large whisky, a bottle of sparkling water and a bowl of skin-on-fries, which proved to be an excellent accompaniment to the pastrami - very crisp, deliciously soft in the middle, and piping hot.

Next morning it was off to the Hotel du Vin, where the tasting was being held. It was hosted by the très charmante Céline Bouteiller, and the idea was that I'd do a 45-minute presentation in the morning and the afternoon, with a walk-in tasting and food-pairing session in between. It worked very well - four representatives of the Montilla houses were there, including old acquaintance Rafael Delgado of Bodegas Pérez Barquero, and in the seminars we were able to demonstrated the astonishing range of different styles of this classic sweet wine - some very rich, figgy and chocolatey, others with more acidity and freshness. The youngest was a 2005 vintage from Bodegas Alvear (and the lovely María Alvear Garijo was there to explain the background), and the oldest was a 1981 vintage from Bodegas La Aurora. Every one was different, not only in the glass but in the packaging: some were startlingly modern, others reassuringly traditional, but all were very much appreciated by those present. In the lunch break we were able to taste some Finos and Amontillados with food-matching canapés, and the whole thing was beautifully organised. The only disappointment was that the final seminar, which had been booked solid, was depleted by 14 people who simply didn't turn up. The organisers had prepared the food-matching samples and the wines, of course, which were all wasted. The wine trade is a busy and unpredictable business, as I know from my own experiences, but it is SO rude to put your name down for an event which requires this much organisation and then simply not to turn up without even bothering to 'phone and apologise.

Montilla vineyards - spot the chalk!

Got lucky with the train home, though - Bristol to Southampton Central (with the luxury of three coaches rather than two on the train from Cardiff - a miracle) and same-platform connection to Worthing, so home by nine o'clock. And because it was platform 2, with no shops or bars (they're all on platforms 1 and 4), there was no temptation to buy railway-station food and a bottle of wine, which was probably just as well.

Cognac Day 4 - Martell

26-Sep-08 - Visit to Cognac Martell. Martell is the oldest of the 'big' Cognac houses and the centrepiece of the complex is the original house in which Jean Martell, a Jerseyman by birth, set up in business in 1715 - there's an evocative virtual tour of it on the company website. We were shown round by Michael Mathews and although, inevitably, when you visit any region there's a good deal of duplication and repetition, this visit at least ran exactly on time from start to finish. Janet Burns (Accent PR) had to leave early to take Eleonora Scholes back to Bordeaux for her connecting flight to Lyon and then Italy, and this might be a good moment to mention that, had each individual visit been as well-organised as the overall tour and timings, this trip would have been a masterpiece. It was a very good trip, except for the timekeeping of individual visits, which are out of our hands, and all credit to Janet and her team for the vision. The CWW publishes a list of visit guidelines and, in the future, it is hoped that these will be adopted as an industry norm. It's understandable that, when a producer has a bunch of international journalists in, they want to keep them there for as long as possible, but all that happens is that many of the visitors become frustrated at the delays, repetition and boredom, and that is not good PR for the host.

Anyway, back to Martell, and the tasting which was conducted by Damien Batteux in the atmospheric tasting room in the old cellars. There had been discussion earlier in the trip about the various merits and demerits of distilling Cognac 'on the lees' or after filtration to remove the lees. The former adds a certain 'gaminess' to the raw spirit, which many blenders like; the latter produces a cleaner, purer spirit, and this is the method preferred by Martell: we were able to taste both methods, side-by-side. Another side-by-side comparison was loose-grain and tight-grain oak, and that reminded me of the zillion different decisions a winemaker, distiller and blender have to make, every vintage. My personal preference was for the tight-grain style, which seemed to have more finesse as well as some lovely floral hints. We then went on to the VSOP (4-8 years old) which had some rather beguiling 'plummy' fruit, and then the Cordon Bleu, which is mainly Borderies and blended from 120-150 base Cognacs. This had a mid-palate with some palpable fruit, and rather nice 'chewy' finish, which I liked: 'blackberry leaves' was Daniel's description. Hmm... Finally the XO in the 'half-moon' bottle is blended from 200-300 base Cognacs with ages between 30 and 40 years. This was rich, dark, powerful with hints of caramel, and longer than the M25: magnificent.

The team in the old house at Martell: l/r Sandy Leckie, Vivienne Franks, Caspar Auchterlonie, Angela Reddin, me, Eleonora Scholes, Godfrey Spence, Roshna Ahmad, Janet Burns (Accent PR), Susan Hulme, Sophie Kevany, Timo Jokinen. Pic.: Steven Morris.

And the visit finished bang on time at 12:00 noon. The others were off to lunch at Martell's Château Chanteloup, but I had volunteered to head back to Bordeaux early with Timo Jokinen, who had to catch his flight to Finland, and Sophie Kevany, who lives in Bordeaux. I had fancied a leisurely couple of hours in the first-class lounge (I'm a member of Priority Pass, which I heartily recommend if you travel as much as I do), typing up my notes and having a couple of large ones. This was not to be. The check-in desk didn't open until two hours before the flight, so I sat in the concourse for an hour or more waiting and then, of course, managed to get in the check-in queue behind a family of four with enough luggage to sink a battleship, and a bunch of blokes with surfboards (in Bordeaux?) ski-ing equipment and what looked like several kitchen sinks. And when I got there it wasn't worth it. The lounge at Bordeaux is one of the most dismal I've ever encountered: it's small, has only one loo for Ladies, Gents and disabled, was unattended, and has whisky and gin in almost-empty quarter-bottles. Definitely not worth the subscription.

I managed a bag of those little nibblythingies on the flight (BA - very different from my Club Class flight out) and a decent glass of wine (Gran Feudo red from Chivite) and got a lift on the milk-float at Gatwick north. My driver was waiting for me, fortunately, and I was home by about 7:00 pm, absolutely Christmas-crackered and vowing never to go away again... Until the next time. Fortunately Jill had laid in stocks of the necessary, and after several extremely large ones, a large slice of meat-and-potato pie and half a bottle of Rioja, I staggered off to bed. Didn't have to get up the following morning - result!

Cognac day 3 - Courvoisier, Hennessy and the dinner (or not, in my case)

25-Sep-08 - Visit to Cognac Courvoisier in Jarnac, just down the road from Hine - lovely views across the river and a comprehensive (and mercifully short) introduction from their PR person, the elegant and charming Jennifer Szersnovicz, then a look at the museum (surprisingly interesting thanks to the Napoléon connection - his hat, coat, and various accoutrements), corporate video (and another map of Cognac!) And finally, the tasting. This was good, with a range of Cognacs and, if not a glass for everyone, a glass for most. There were eight samples from VSOP to Initiale extra with cask samples of 15-year-old and 35-year-old spirits. These were splendid but, once again the visit overran. At 11:30 we told Jennifer that we had to go but she said we hadn't yet seen the cooperage, I apologised and explained that we didn't have time. As it happened, Steven Morris (the photographer on the trip) wanted to get some pictures of the cooperage, and Jennifer pointed out that it was on the way to our next visit, so we stopped for long enough for him to get his pix, and arrived at Hennessy about 25 minutes late.

Visit to Hennessy - The Château de Bagnolet beggars description - six acres of immaculate lawns, topiaried hedges, lake and terraces outside, antiques, paintings, mahogany and fabrics inside: truly magnificent. We had the newly-launched 'Summit' cocktail - VSOP, lemonade, lime zest, fresh ginger and cucumber peel - which is intended to revitalise the cocktail market (very pleasant but still a waste of good Cognac in my humble opinion). We were hosted by Maurice Hennessy, the eighth generation of the family (although the company is now owned by LVMH), and Jean-Michel Cochet, Hennessy's 'ambassador'.

On the terrace at Château de Bagnolet with 'Summit' cocktail in hand: me, Eleonora Scholes, Godfrey Spence, Sandy Leckie, Caspar Auchterlonie, Vivienne Franks, Sophie Kevany, Angela Reddin, Jean-Michel Cochet, Roshna Ahmad, Maurice Hennessy, Susan Hulme, Timo Jokinen. Pic.: Steven Morris

Lunch, cooked by the Hennessy chef David Fransoret, was served in the château's dining room, and was excellent: pan-fried skate with Montpellier butter on a fondue of truffled leeks - absolutely sublime, especially with the Château Reynon 2006 Sauvignon Blanc. Last May I was a speaker at the Winecreator conference in Ronda (see archive) and on the same platform was Denis Dubourdieu, owner and winemaker at Reynon, who is widely acknowledged as the 'king' of white Bordeaux. Main course was noisettes of roast lamb with a confit of shallots, baby carrots, green beans and potatoes vapeur. With this we had Château Peyrabon 1999, Cru Bourgeois, Haut-Médoc. The château is situated on the edge of Pauillac, and it shows in the wine, which was nearing its well-balanced maturity. Cheese followed the lamb, and then a crème brûlée with honey, saffron and petits-fours: all in all a splendid meal in a breathtaking setting.

After lunch the 'work' resumed with a visit to the cellars in Cognac itself, which straddle the river. The barrel cellars (which contain ancient Cognacs going back to 1900) are on the west side of the river, and we crossed by Hennessy launch to the east side for the tasting. This was an excellent range, with the samples 'cracked' where necessary to 40% abv which made them easier to taste than barrel-strength spirits. We tasted the new Fins Bois spirit 2007, then the 2002, a five-year-old, a 1983 Petite Champagne and a 1956 Grande Champagne. These last two were magnificent and yet, still, even after all this time with a flame licking around the finish. This was when I learned about blending and how ageing is not everything. The next sample was much smoother, elegant, balanced and rich, and made up of spirits from two to ten years old. In other words, much younger than the previous two. It pointed up just how important it is to have a mix of age, mellowness and freshness in the finished blend. Next up was a blend of four-to-15 year old spirits, which had real style, length and spice, and finally we tasted Hennessy XO - floral hints, violets, caramel and endless on the finish. It's made up of 100 different base Cognacs, aged from 10 to 20 years, and is a masterpiece of the blender's art. As our host remarked "it's not just a case of putting it in a barrel and waiting."

That evening there was a gala dinner at the town hall, but by this time my creaking joints were screaming for a rest, and I chickened out and had an early night. It was, by all accounts, a splendid affair with an ice bar and ice candlesticks and the Part des Anges charity auction of rare Cognacs. Vivienne Franks had had the bright idea of buying one of the lots and donating it to the Benevolent. We agreed a maximum of €400, but the cheapest lot (estimated in the catalogue at €150) went for €500, and from then on it was up, up and away. Meanwhile, I was tucking into a room-service steak-frites with a bottle of the red (Merlot) Vin de Pays des Charentes from the same house as the white we'd enjoyed at Hine: it was excellent, indeed the whole stay at this beautiful hotel was splendid. I got my early night (and nine hours' sleep!).

Lined up for the gala dinner, from left to right: Eleonora Scholes, Janet Burns (Accent PR), Sophie Kevany, Caspar Auchterlonie, Susan Hulme, Roshna Ahmad, Godfrey Spence,
Angela Reddin, Timo Jokinen, Vivienne Franks, Sandy Leckie.
Behind the camera: Steven Morris. In bed: me.


Ice candlesticks at the dinner. Pic.: Roshna Ahmad.

Cognac day 1/2 - Hine, BNIC, Frapin, Rémy Martin

23-Sep-08 - Evening visit to Hine Cognac in Jarnac, right by the river Charentes. I went there about 12 years ago with Jill and we had an excellent tasting with Bernard Hine himself. He is, apparently, retired but still pops in now and again to make sure that they're still doing it 'his' way. Interestingly, Hine now belongs to the Angostura Group, and before that was a member of LVMH, but Bernard was still firmly in control in spite of the fact that the family has had no equity in the company for yonks. Anyway, the 'tasting' was conducted by Eric Forget, the cellarmaster, and consisted of nothing more than a 'nosing' of eight or nine Cognacs, including two examples of the vintage 1978, one aged in Jarnac and the other in Bristol. The latter is shipped back to Jarnac for bottling and showed very different characteristics from the one aged in Jarnac. This was an interesting comparison and, of course, 'nosing' is how the professionals make up the blends, but it was nevertheless disappointing not to taste the Cognacs. We had dinner in the directors' dining room: two cheese soufflés with 2002 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Le Charmois Pinot Noir, Michel Picard (big, classic); and sliced duck-breast with a rosti of potatoes and sliced apple, followed by cheese (including the swiss Emmental), this last served with 2003 Château de Castres, Graves (elegant, spicy). We finished up with tiramisú (fab) served with Hine Antique (even fabber) and were actually allowed to drink it, this time.

Eric Forget in the Hine blending room. (Pic: Roshna Ahmad)

24-Sep-08 - Visit to the BNIC offices in Cognac itself: very grand and with a large conference room. We had a presentation from Jérôme Durand, Director of Marketing and Communication, who ran us through the background (history, geography, geology, etc.) of Cognac very expertly. In front of us were five tasting samples, two of the newly-distilled spirit and the other three 5, 10, and 15-year-old samples of the generic Cognac. Sadly, we were to sit through a further two hours of repetition during a second presentation which did little more than cover the same ground as the first, at tedious speed. Janet Burns, who had organised the trip, tried valiantly to remind the presenter that we did have further appointments that day and time was short, but to no avail. We finally got to the tasting at 11:15, on a visit scheduled to end at 11:30. The tasting was extremely useful and came with the first lesson of Cognac: ageing is not everything.

We were, inevitably half an hour late for our next visit, which was Cognac Frapin, but very well worth the trip on its own. The tasting/blending room is floor-to-ceiling bottles of Cognac and our host, Olivier Paultes, talked us through most of the range. The Cognacs were sublime, and I was reminded of Easter Sunday, 2002 when we were staying in a hotel in St.-Tropez and had lunch at Michel Roux's country house. He cooked, we drank 1985 claret and, after the meal, Frapin Cognac. There were two other guests there (names escape me, unfortunately) and we all remarked that this was probably the best Cognac we'd ever tasted. All I can remember about the presentation was that it came in a moon flask with what appeared to be a handwritten 'electric pencil' inscription. I asked Olivier what it was, and he replied "it is a special blend we make for Michel. We have several customers who come to taste and select a particular style." I asked how many bottles you have to order to get your own blend and he was rather cagey, but I got the impression that this is one of those questions (like the fuel-consumption of a Rolls-Royce) which, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Lunch was at Château Fontpinot, a magnificent pile out amongst the vineyards, and hosted by Max Cointreau (of that ilk) who married Mlle Frapin thus conjoining two of Aquitaine's foremost distilling families. I had to leave during lunch, having had an urgent call from YC! to file an article (on restaurant wine-lists) by 5:00 pm (it was press-day), and so took a cab back to the hotel, filed the article at one minute to five, and went down to the bar for an extremely large Four Roses at five o'clock, when we were supposed to depart for the next visit. Needless to say, no-one else had returned and I had the bar to myself for the better part of an hour before my colleagues returned, to dash upstairs, wash, change and come down again fifteen minutes later.

Château Fontpinot (pic: Roshna Ahmad)

We left for Rémy Martin eventually, fetching up at their very glamorous complex in Cognac itself, and meeting up with two other groups of journalists, one from Germany and one from the USA. After the tour we trundled off to the Rémy 'Club' for a short exercise of food-matching. This was an interesting idea, but I felt that it really didn't come off. We had the VSOP with a goat's cheese canapé on a kind of chewy crouton. Both brandy and canapé were delicious, but whether it was a food match is something of a moot point. Then we had the XO Excellence with a chocolate macaroon. Again, both were delicious, but I didn't really feel that there was any point of contact. I don't think that Cognac is really for food... Or, indeed for cocktails. We were presented with a new cocktail created by their own mixologist which featured watermelon juice and VSOP. Most of us finished about half of it - 'a waste of good Cognac' I wrote in my notes.

Dinner was excellent: roast maigre with truffled pastry and a velouté of girolles with St.-Esprit, Maison des Maines 2005. This is a Vin de Pays des Charentes and quite astonishing in its quality. I've always found the local wines in the Cognac area to be a bit bland and nondescript, but this had some real class and character, with Sauvignon freshness. The main course was a pastilla of pigeon with a superb Château de Malleret 1996: although we're quite a way from Bordeaux, the taste in these parts is very much for claret.

Pudding was a millefeuille of chcocolate and I confess to furthering the experiment with XO Excellence (but it was still better on its own, afterwards).

The blending hall at Rémy Martin. That's me sitting on the right-hand end of the bench, looking at yet another map of Cognac. But thank God for somewhere to sit!
(Pic: Steven Morris)