Homage to Catalonia

25-Nov-08 - Off to the offices of ICEX in Chiltern Street, London, for a tasting of Catalan wines. About 90 on show and I tasted through about half of them, as it's a region whose bodegas I know well. Unfortunately I laid down my notes before nibbling some tapas and, when I returned, they had disappeared. A search is under way, and I'll reëdit this post if and when they turn up. On a broader scale two things stick in my mind: the increasing quality of varietal Xarel·lo from the coast (especially Penedès) and more 'affordable' (i.e. Under £12) reds from Priorat. More later if the notes resurface.

Close Encounters of the Vinous Kind

22-Nov-08 - To the Landmark in London for the DECANTER Fine Wine Encounter, to sign some books and taste some wine. The Saturday had sold out weeks before and Sunday, so they told me, sold out on the day. I think the secret of this event's success is that they do keep numbers down to a manageable minimum and, of course, they attract some big hitters as exhibitors and presenting masterclasses. I signed and sold 14 books and met some good old chums: the wine trade is such a clubby thing which is just as well as there's precious little money in it.


Had a tasting with José-Manuel Ortega (left) of O. Fournier who had very generously hosted Jill and me in Chile and Argentina last February (see blog entry for 12-Feb-08). He'd just won several more awards for his wines, which is not a surprise. I've visited all three of his wineries (in three countries) and the winemaking is exemplary. In addition, his beautiful wife Nadia (below) has won an award as executive chef of the in-house restaurant at their bodega in Mendoza (we ate there in February). Unfortunately, he says, he seems to spend most of his time in aeroplanes flying between the wineries and the export markets, rather than with his young family, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...

Pix - O. Fournier website

Last Night at The Eversley - 1

24-Nov-08 - Sirloin steak, celeriac mash and cauliflower with black peppercorn sauce and, having run out of 'everyday' wines, I opened a dusty bottle of 2001 Valsardo reserva (Ribera del Duero). It was a sample which had been sent to me some time last year and I hadn't got around to it. I decanted it (I'm routinely decanting anything from about 2003 back these days). The wine was perfect - mature, ripe, full of fruit, elegantly-balanced tannins, lovely length and spot-on with steak au poivre. Jill loved it, and so did I. It was only afterwards that I looked up the price - £35 at Swig. I haven't told her yet.

Lunch at the InterContinental, London

20-Nov-08 - Well, Theo Randall's restaurant inside the Intercontinental, anyway: he is 'in partnership' with the hotel and opened his own restaurant there in 2006 after 17 years at the River Café. He has a reputation for excellent but unpretentious rural Italian cooking, so when I was invited by the Grana Padano cheese campaign to go to a cookery demonstration and lunch, there was no hesitation.

I don't know quite why it is, but all too often reception desks in these grand hotels don't seem to know what's going on. I told the (very pretty) girl behind the desk that I was "here for the cheese seminar", which might have been the wrong terminology, but she should have known. She asked me to wait, and another very smart young woman approached and asked me if I was in the right hotel. "Theo Randall cooks here, doesn't he?" I asked. "Ah, yes" - she waved me toward the restaurant which was plainly visible and which, of course, I should have seen the moment I walked in.

Inside, I was plied with ice cold Prosecco Ca' Morlin, and met the hosts from Webber Shandwick, an impossibly large public relations corporation which is handling the generic account for Grana Padano. Generous wedges of the riserva cheese (12-16 months maturity) had been chopped up to go with the wine and went down very well. The style is similar to Parmyjarmy (as we call it the Eversley) but, according to Theo, it has only half the fat, so it's easier to cook with. More of that in a moment, but the guests began to arrive and they all seemed to be fabulously-attractive young women. I did spot a fat old git with a beard, but then realised that I was looking into a mirror. Eventually apart from me, the chef, the waiter, and one other gentleman, it was an all-girl affair. What does this tell us about cookery journalism in London?

Grana Panado is, apparently, the best-selling cheese in Italy. It's made mostly in Lombardy but also in neighbouring regione Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Trentino, and Veneto and, unlike Parmyjarmy it has a creaminess which makes it very nibblable, even with sparkling wine (did I ever tell you about the disastrous dinner with Elizabeth Morrison at Julian's in Nottingham in 1965? Don't ever order blue cheese with Champagne!).

Anyway, Theo took us through a couple of demonstrations using the cheese. First up was a risotto with onion squash and marjoram. He is insistent on quality ingredients and generally buys Italian - the rice was pure white, clean, and uncracked and Theo added chicken stock along with the other ingredients. Risotto is all about constant stirring, of course, and he was patently struggling with an inadequate portable electric ring in the private dining room off the main restaurant. The result was delicious, however, and troughed enthusiastically by those present. The next demo was a frittata - an omelette made with organic eggs with cima di rapa (turnip tops) and ricotta cheese. The ingredients were, as before, all Italian. "I used to buy my eggs from a free-range farm in Surrey, until I saw these", he says. They're big, individually stamped, and come from a farm in Genoa where the chickens run free and are fed on corn and carrots. The result is an egg with a thick, viscous white and an almost luminous golden yolk. The ricotta was amazingly creamy and the resulting omelette absolutely delicious.

For the third demo we got to sit down with a glass of 2005 Pietra Nera, Marco Bartoli (IGT Sicilia - dry-fermented Muscat, or Zibibbo as they call it on the island of Pantelleria - excellent, fresh, delicious) and enjoy ravioli with potato and shavings of white truffle. Theo told me that the going rate for white truffles at the moment is £2,300 a kilo, but at least it's better than last June, when it was £4,000. On that basis I calculated that I had about a tenner's worth on my plate: fab.

Then it was lunch in earnest: chargrilled Aberdeen Angus beef fillet crusted with thyme, with potato and fennel al forno with cream, Grana Padano and salsa verde. I passed on the salsa verde (mustard allergy) but got stuck into the steak with gusto. With this dish they served 2005 Pignolo 'Arbis Ròs', Borgo San Daniele (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia) - a wine with lovely structure but a good deal of tannin. I thought it needed another year in bottle, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it greatly. Pudding was ricotta cheesecake with William pears marinated with vanilla and, of course, Grana Padano - lovely stuff. We drank the 2005 Moscato d'Asti, G.D. Vajra (Piemonte, and a house better known for Barolo - but at 5.5% abv a very good, light way to finish a meal).

This was, altogether, an excellent demonstration of the capabilities of the cheeses, as well as being a splendid lunch in good company. I hope to be interviewing Theo for YES CHEF! In due course.

Giving up Smoking

19-Nov-08 - This is a true story. It's not a new story because the colleague who told it to me wants to remain anoymous in case people think he's weird, so it happened a few years ago. This is what he told me (these are not his exact words):

"I'd been trying to give up smoking for years, but I could never take the withdrawal symptoms, and time after time, I relapsed. Then one night I woke up in the small hours and went to the fridge to get a drink of cold water. As I opened the fridge door I heard a voice behind me say 'isn't it about time you packed up smoking?' For some reason this didn't seem particularly odd, and I replied 'I've tried, but what about the withdrawal symptoms?' The voice said. 'You just give up. I'll take care of the withdrawal symptoms.' I turned around and saw a glowing spot of orange light hanging in the air, which faded as I watched. I went back to my bedroom shaking my head and saying to myself 'this is the weirdest dream I've ever had!' When I got to the bedroom I stopped for a moment, and picked up one of my socks. There were two chairs, one stacked upside-down on the other, and I put the sock over one of the upside-down chair legs. 'We'll see in the morning if it really is a dream.' I said to myself. I woke up the next morning and the sock was on the chair leg, so I really had been awake at the time. And I wasn't gasping for a fag. The craving had simply disappeared, and I haven't had a smoke since. Later that day my son, back from school, logged on to pick up his e-mail (it was in the days when we only had a primitive dial-up system, and we had to pay, of course, so he only picked up mail once a day). He had a message from Australia, saying that my brother (who'd emigrated there years ago) had died the previous day. Allowing for the time difference, I worked out that the time of his death was the same as the time I heard the voice in the kitchen. I've never been able to figure it out."

I saw him again recently, several years on, and he still hasn't had another cigarette.

Trains, Hand and Flowers

19-Nov-08 - "Where's Princes Risborough?" Asked Jill. "I've never heard of it." I explained that it's in Buckinghamshire and a convenient staging post for Myburgh, our photographer, to pick me up on the way to the Hand and Flowers in Marlow. That's where I'd arranged to meet Simon Hulstone, chef-patron of the Elephant in Torquay, Knorr Chef of the Year (see post 07-Oct-08) and the UK representative at next year's Bocuse d'Or in Lyon. "So why aren't you going to Torquay?" Because Simon isn't there. He's flying into LHR (poor sod) at 11:00 and we've arranged to meet on his way home. Marlow is en route, and not far from the YES CHEF! offices in Buckingham. With me so far?

"Where's Princes Risborough?" Asked the man at the station ticket office. I referred him to the answer I had given previously. His face lit up as it appeared on his computer screen. "Yes, here it is! I've never sold a ticket to there before!" It was a light moment in the usual slog up to London, although the train from Littlehampton usually has plenty of space after 9:00, but it fills up very quickly after Worthing, and this morning it was only a four-car train, and was packed by the time we left Hove. It was on time into Victoria, however, and I got a cab to Marylebone (£10) arriving half an hour before my connecting train departed. It's the Birmingham train, the diesel Chiltern Clubman (Class 168) and was not only almost empty but has proper seats with tables and sockets for your laptop even in second class. Spotlessly clean, too.

The Hand and Flowers has the look of a warm, welcoming country pub, with high-backed banquettes, raw brick bar and walls, table settings with fresh flowers, good glass and crocks and rough-hewn plank tables. There are no tablecloths, but linen napkins, and 'planky' art on the walls, newspapers for the guests, and charming and very attractive waitresses. Tom and Beth Kerridge sold all their possessions and took over what had been a simple neighbourhood boozer in the spring of 2005, and it still functions as a pub, although food has rather taken over the place - so much so that it won a Michelin star in 2006. You can read all about it in the January, 2009 issue of YES CHEF! Magazine, as well as the interview with Simon Hulstone.

But the food: started with glazed omelette of smoked haddock and parmesan (£8.50) which was served in the pan in which it had been cooked - lovely creamy egg with strips of lightly-smoked fish and just the right, subtle amount of parmyjarmy (as we call it at the Eversley). I asked (as I always do) for the waitress to choose a glass of something suitable and she came back with a very acceptable Chilean Sauvignon. The serving was generous and I only ate half of it because I knew that I wouldn't finish the main course otherwise.

This I had spotted on the restaurant's website: slow cooked Oxford beef with bone marrow bread pudding, pomme galette and braising jus (£15.50) which was spectacular. The beef was actually ox-cheek cooked for so long that it fell apart on the plate, and the bread pudding deliciously mopped up the jus. Simon had the same dish and we both agreed that it was excellent. He was driving and so stuck to water, and I had a glass of South African Cabernet-Sauvignon, which was equally well chosen. Myburgh is South African himself and always orders steak (can't complain about that as I am a steakista myself) and he had Oxfordshire rump steak with Hand and Flowers chips and Béarnaise Sauce (£19.50), which he pronounced equally excellent. The chips are something of a speciality, steamed and then twice-fried to become like croquettes, and the Béarnaise, well, for me it's always been the king of sauces (well, except maybe for sauce au poivre) for steak.

You can eat here for under a tenner ("bowl of soup, bread and a pint") or three courses from about £30 plus drinks, and Tom told me that the average spend is about £35. Not bad at all for Michelin-starred food.

Trains, Trains and Rioja 2004

12-13-Nov-08 - Off to London again to taste Rioja 2004 at Decanter magazine at the Blue Fin Building in the city. [Anorak Alert Ahead] This means a train to London Bridge and, as the tastings start at 10:30 that means the 08:35 from Worthing and changing on to Thameslink (or whatever it's called these days) at some point between Brighton and East Croydon. I usually change at East Croydon because it means I have an hour in a comfortable Southern 377 before having to board one of those rattley old 319s for the fifteen minutes to LBG. The last twice, however, the train from Croydon has been packed like a sardine-tin, so for day one I decided to change at Haywards Heath. There were, indeed, a few seats, but not all that many and, again, by Croydon it was stuffed. Why they run four-car trains at that time of day I really can't understand. On day two I took the advice of the National Rail website and changed at Hassocks. I got a seat but it did mean over an hour in an increasingly cramped and under-ventilated train. On day one, having a sandwich after the tasting, I had realised that I could see Blackfriars station out of the window, just across the river. So, on day two I went to and from Blackfriars, got a seat in both directions without trouble (apart from almost suffocating on the way up), changed to a proper train at Croydon on the way down and saved a couple of quid on taxi fares. Result. [End of Anorak Alert].

As to the tasting itself, I can't talk about the results until they're published in the magazine, but suffice it to say that I tasted 81 wines over the two days along with half a dozen fellow sippers under the guidance of the alluring Christelle Guibert. The wines were, in the main very good (I gave a lot of 16s, fourteen 17s, four 18s and, astonishingly, five 19s - there were some real stonkers there), but 2004 was officially classified as an excelente year. The full results will be published in the April issue of the magazine. One point about this big corporate headquarters is the catering: after the second tasting and the taste-off for the final awards, they served up merguez and mash with onion marmalade - the ultimate comfort food - and we finished off the trophy bottles with it. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

Señorío de Arínzano at Galvin's

11-Nov-08 - To London for lunch at Galvin's Bistrot de Luxe with Fernando Chivite, who's launching his new Pago wines from the Señorío de Arínzano in Navarra. I first visited the estate in 1992 when it was hardly in production, and was shown round by the lovely Mercedes Chivite, who, along with her brothers, was tremendously enthusiastic about the potential for the site. Promotion to DO Pago status has finally proved them right although, sadly, she didn't live to see it - cancer got her in 2006 at the age of 43. A crying shame.

Life goes on, however, and the Chivite family spent heavily on refurbishing the old buildings on the site - including a beguiling chapel - and the King and Queen performed an official opening once the work was complete. Although the DO Pago legislation wasn't passed until 2003, it had been mooted as early as 1999 and the family decided that from the 2000 vintage they'd set aside some of the best wines in the hope that one day they'd able to market them as individual estate wines. It took a while (and a seismic shift in the wine regulatory body in Navarra) but it eventually did happen at the end of 2007. I met Fernando at Madrid-Fusión in January this year and tasted the wines, which didn't, at that stage even have proper labels. Eleven months on the designs have been perfected and the wines are ready for the market, although it's unlikely that Berkmann's, who handle the other Chivite wines, will be the agents.

The restaurant was busy ("I thought you were having a recession" exclaimed Fernando. "It doesn't look like it here!") And they'd decanted the three wines for us. This is how they showed:

Señorío de Arínzano 2000 - soft-fruit, aromatic//big, rich fruit with lovely silky tannins, and a soft, rich, long finish. 18/20

Señorío de Arínzano 2001 - a darker fruit style, more damsony on the nose//dusky fruit and more tannins (understandably) than the 2000, but that same loving, silky finish. 18/20

Señorío de Arínzano 2002 - rather closed on the nose with hints of dark fruit and a bit of smoky oak//but big fruit bursts forth on the palate with tremendous structure and complexity and the finish goes on for ever. Not ready yet but this will be a blockbuster. 19/20

Future developments will see the abandonment of Cabernet-Sauvignon in favour of Tempranillo, and there may be a barrel-fermented Chardonnay at some point. Most of the wood is Alliers. There won't be a 2003 as Fernando didn't think the grapes were good enough, but the 2004 has just been bottled. Oh, and they sell for €80-€90 a bottle, although a UK price has yet to be decided.

Lunch was an exceptionally convivial affair, with Fernando and his export manager, and the ever-genial Charles Metcalfe (his new book on Portugal, by the way, is the best ever on the subject). We were able to 'road-test' the wines we'd just tasted with food, and I decided to give them a hard time with the first course by ordering Bayonne ham, which came with tiny cocktail onions and gherkins. The combination was unexpectedly delicious, but I think a white wine would have performed rather better. I gave in over the main course and ordered a tagine of lamb with cous cous, aubergine caviar and harissa which was, quite frankly, better than anything I've ever had in Morocco. The lamb simply fell off the bone and the wines were exactly right with it: especially the 2002 which had seemed a little 'hard' during the tasting, but meshed with the aromatic flavours of the dish to perfection - indeed, it even saw the harissa off. These are magnificent wines destined for greatness.

Weird Wines, Strange Spirits, and Six Flights of Stairs

06-Nov-08 - There's a company which advertises cooking wines and spirits in YES CHEF!, and I visited their stand at the Restaurant Show. It's called Gourmet Classic, based in Dorset, and they were showing an astonishing array of products - Port, Madeira, Marsala, red and white wines, liqueurs and spirits, all of which apparently pay no excise duty or VAT because they're classified as condiments. The products are, according to the company, made in the same way as the traditional product, but at a lower strength and with additions which render them undrinkable but still perfectly usable for cooking. Their representative, Angus I'Anson didn't go into detail about the process but he did seem to be causing considerable interest. Later in the day I was in the Jacquart Champagne lounge and bumped into fellow wine-writer Caspar Auchterlonie, who'd found something similar: wines and spirits for cooking but in this case the spirits were in the form of a gel, made by a company called Cuisinewine. This was a sector of the catering trade I hadn't encountered before. When I was in the wine trade there were generic wines and spirits for cooking, of course, and we supplied them to our restaurant customers, but they were always full strength and paid all the taxes. I was quite fascinated to find out more and, shortly afterwards, I was invited by Cuisinewine to a lunch in London to try them out.

As it happened, the invitation to lunch was on the same day as a Hungarian Wine masterclass hosted by the lovely Caroline Gilby, which started at 3:30 pm, so I had the opportunity to do both.

The lunch was at Deep restaurant, which is on the Boulevard at Imperial Wharf ("Where's that, guv? Never 'eard of it") just the other side of Chelsea Harbour. This is a smart development with some up-market shops and apartments which (according to Caspar, who lives nearby) are still fetching £500,000 apiece. It's one of those minimalist yuppie places with pale colours, huge windows and a rather pleasant terrace overlooking the Thames (but a bit too cold for sitting out in November). The chef-patron, Christian Sandefeldt, showed us how he used the products in various ways - a moules marinière (my colleague Sue Prain told me that it was delicious but, of course, I can't eat molluscs), a slice of belly-pork in red wine and a crèpe-suzette flambéed in Calvados, both of which worked extremely well. The Calvados gel simply melted in the pan and then burst into flames on cue. Johan Allert from Cuisinewine explained that the wines are made in the normal way at a winery in Extremadura (in fact Bodegas San Marcos in Almendralejo - they served the red Campobarro with lunch), and then it's sent to Sweden (the company's head office) where it goes through a special filtering process to reduce the alcohol to about 5% abv. Again, they didn't go into detail about how it's done, but they did say that after filtration they add salt to the wine (a very small amount) to 'denature' it, presumably on the basis that most cookery involves a certain amount of salt anyway. We were invited to taste the wines as an experiment and they were rather viscous and noticeably salty: not much chance of the KP slipping a bottle in his bag on the way home. The spirits were, we were assured, the full 40% abv but 'jellified' and very viscous indeed. Once again, they weren't too keen to tell us how they did it without changing the strength, but it seemed to work.

Onward to lunch and an interesting tasting menu. First course was an assiette of foie-gras - four tasting samples done in different ways with four different products, including an astonishing 'tiramisù' (yes, with foie-gras) with the Calvados. I have to say that I could not tell the difference between the various sauces and those I've had before made with the 'regular' wines and spirits. Next up was a skate wing 'bourgignon' done with the red wine, and this was the one dish that didn't work for me - the skate wing was beautifully done but the sauce (or the combination of the sauce and the cooking process) was just too salty, and I couldn't eat it. Osso bucco (with a delicious risotto) came next, and this was perfectly tender and the sauce suitably rich and I wouldn't have known that it wasn't made with a 'regular' wine. With this we drank the very respectable Campobarro Tempranillo Ribera del Guadiana, having previously enjoyed an excellent Alsace Gewurztraminer followed by a red Cheverny (Pinot Noir and Gamay) which, I had to confess, I'd never had before. I've had white Cheverny, perhaps most notably at À La Marmite Dieppoise in Dieppe, but this was my first taste of the red. And I thought I'd been around.

There was a dessert - plum financier with white chocolate and Amaretto ice cream - but, as always seems to happen to me when I'm eating in London, I had to leave before it arrived. They did, however, very generously give me samples of small bottles of three of the spirits - I'll let you know how we get on with them - as well as a full-size bottle of the white and the red Campobarro.

Onward, then to Mosimann's Club on West Halkin Street for the Hungarian tasting. I'd been there before but remember it rather differently from how it is now. One thing I certainly didn't remember was SIX flights of stairs to get up to the 'belfry' at the top. It's a very attractive room, sponsored by Mappin and Web, but without oxygen I was gasping for the first few minutes. The event was hosted by a new outfit called Mephisto Wine Merchants, based in Golders Green, and I found myself sitting between the feisty Lilyane Weston, a fellow wine writer, and the enigmatically beautiful and exotically named Solangela Tangarife from Mephisto. I was, of course, late and the presentations had started.

I was particularly interested in this tasting as I went to Hungary (albeit eight or nine years ago) and was very impressed with the wines, which seemed to have great potential, and I wanted to see what had happened since. I had done a couple of consultancy tastings of Hungarian wines in the meantime, but availability in the UK still seemed to be at supermarket levels. It seems that this new company aims to change this.

There were three wineries represented: Takler in Szekszárd and Bock and Malatinszky in Villány-Siklós. Each one was introduced by a representative of the winery, and we tasted five wines from each. The general standard was very high, and the style very Hungarian: big, austere wines with plenty of structure and dark notes of Hungarian oak. They are essentially 'food wines' and, indeed, canapés were provided but, having just come from a three-course lunch, I didn't indulge. My 17/20 and 18/20 picks are these:

TAKLER

Kékfrankos Reserve 2007, 16 months in oak, £12 - spicy, soft-fruit nose//big structure with firm tannins and a long, austere but elegant finish. 17/20

Cabernet Franc Reserve 2006, up to 24 months in oak, £18 - some almost strawberry richness//richness, structure, power and that characteristic austere length. 17/20. Takler says he thinks that the Cabernet-Franc "has a great future in Hungary", and on this (and later) showing(s) he's not wrong.

BOCK

Portugieser 2007, no oak, £7.50 - 'inky' tannins and damsony fruit//lovely, bright fruit, nice balance of fruit and tannins, delicious. 17/20

Syrah 2006, 18 months in oak, £18 - dark peppery spice, some richness//more spice, distinct tannins but the fruit is there, long. 17/20

Bock Cuvée 2000 (Bordeaux mix), 18 months in oak, £17.50 - big aromatics, some hi-end fruit//big structure, big tannins, big fruit but it all comes together, long. 18/20

Cabernet-Franc Selection 2006, 24 months in oak, £18 - deep, dark fruit, strawberry character but still austere//good, big, powerful fruit, long and elegant, but still austere. 18/20

MALATINSZKY

Kúria Kövesföld 2006 (Cabernet Franc/Cabernet Sauvignon), 16 months in oak, £34 - subtle, spicy, rich fruit//musky-dusky fruit, clean, nicely balanced but very austere - needs five years. 17½/20

Kúria Cabernet Franc 2006, 15 months in oak, £18 - lovely clean, fresh fruit//lovely fruit with crisp tannins finely balanced, long, still austere but this will be a winner - excellent. 18/20

I seem to have used the word 'austere' quite a lot and, given that most of the wines are from the 2006 and 2007 vintages it might just be a question of time, although I've tasted similar characteristics in many Hungarian wines in the past. These are mainly wines from low-yielding vineyards (apparently Takler's Cabernet Franc Reserve yields 600 g per vine, which would seem to indicate just one bunch of grapes) which explains their complexity and extract but also impacts on the prices which may be just a little ambitious given the present state of the market.

I was also able to have a brief chat with the delicious Caroline, who is becoming the 'leading authority' on Eastern Europe, about reports from Kingston University of 'heavy metals' being found in Hungarian wines. I'm not sure of the science behind it and it seems that almost every wine producing country has the same problem, and the researchers admit that it's unlikely that it could be anything to do with the grapes or the soil. Caroline hadn't seen the details of the research but felt that it was probably along the lines of the usual medical scares which seem to surface every few weeks. I saw a cartoon in one of the papers recently in which a doctor is handing some pills to his patient, saying "take one of these three times a day until you read in the newspapers that they're poisonous."

Then it was those six flights of stairs again. Maybe I should get some WD-40 for my creaking joints.