John Radford's Blog

Index to 2008 Posts

2009-01-05T07:10:00.000Z

05-Jan-09 - As I started this blog in a couple of fallow weeks during August, 2008, the posts for Jan>Aug-08 are all in one large file, so I thought I'd include an index of what's there to make searching easier - please search on the dates for full information. If you're mentioned in any of the posts and you'd like to sponsor a link to your own website, please contact me at john@johnradford.com.

21-Jan-08 - Madrid Fusión
01-Feb-08 - Penedès for the Torres opening
12-Feb-08 - To Chile via Madrid with O. Fournier
15-Feb-08 - Argentina
11-Mar-08 - Barcelona for Alimentaria
17-Mar-08 - Lancashire and Lyon (Paul Bocuse)
25-Mar-08 - To Ribera del Duero for the Congreso
08-Apr-08 - To Lyon again (L'Auberge de l'Île)
11-Apr-08 - Bordeaux for the Challenge International du Vin (with video)
13-Apr-08 - London for the Livre Gourmand Awards (won!)
14-Apr-08 - London for L'Ambassade de l'Île, evening at Food, Worthing
15-Apr-08 - Málaga and Ronda (Winecreator conference)
21-Apr-08 - London for the DECANTER World Wine Awards
29-Apr-08 - Stratford-upon-Avon for the Midlands Wine & Spirit Association
03-May-08 - Dinner in Horsham, lunch at Hammerpot
05-May-08 - Birthday open-day at Splash FM
16-May-08 - Gatwick horrors, Nice>St.-Tropez for Michel Roux
21-May-08 - Excel horrors, London Wine Trade Fair
22-May-08 - To Seville for TopWineSpain
24-May-08 - To Barcelona for a presentation, then train horrors, Seville>Jerez for Vinoble
01-Jun-08 - To Empordà via Barcelona for another presentation
03-Jun-08 - To Oporto>Lisbon for a feature on Portuguese food and wine
10-Jun-08 - To Edinburgh for Vinos de Madrid, then London for the OLN tasting
16-Jun-08 - To Logroño via Bilbao for a presentation on Rioja, plus private visits
21-Jun-08 - Annual Caer Gwent strawberry tea
26-Jun-08 - Ribera del Duero tasting at DECANTER (with video)
15-Jul-08 - Plumpton college, Findon Probus
29-Jul-08 - Lyon again for wedding anniversary (Paul Bocuse)
04-Aug-08 - Booze cruise to Dieppe
12-Aug-08 - Lunch at l'Ambassade de l'Île in London
26-Aug-08 - To Reus>Montsant>Rioja for consultancy clients
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04-Sep-08 - Madrid>Tordesillas>Oporto for the François Lurton opening
05-Sep-08 - Eton and The Waterside Inn for YES CHEF!
20-Sep-08 - Hastings Wine and Seafood Festival
22-Sep-08 - Buckingham for YES CHEF!
23-Sep-08 - To Bordeaux for Cognac day 1
24-Sep-08 - Cognac day 2
25-Sep-08 - Cognac day 3
26-Sep-08 - Cognac day 4
28/29-Sep-08 - To Bristol for a presentation on Montilla PX
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05-Oct-08 - Jeremy Watson's 70th at the Royal Overseas League
07-Oct-08 - The Restaurant Show and Knorr Chef of the Year dinner in London
08-Oct-08 - Judging the preliminary round of the Rotary Young Chef, Durrington
09-Oct-08 - Asturias week in London
14-Oct-08 - Douro wines in Brighton, Spanish Embassy reception
17-Oct-08 - Bolney Wine Estate
18-Oct-08 - Judging the National Town Criers Championships, Hastings
21-Oct-08 - Rueda tasting, London
23-Oct-08 - Lunch at Pintxo People, Brighton
24-Oct-08 - An unexpected mention!
29-Oct-08 - Magnificent Madeira and Sparkling Vodka in London
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06-Nov-08 - Weird wines and Strange Spirits
11-Nov-08 - The new Chivite Pago wines at Galvin's Bistrot
12-13-Nov-08 - Rioja 2004 tasting at DECANTER
19-Nov-08 - Hand and Flowers in Marlow for YES CHEF!
19-Nov-08 - Giving up smoking: a strange story
20-Nov-08 - Lunch with Grana Padano at the Intercontinental, London
22-Nov-08 - DECANTER Fine Wine Encounter
24-Nov-08 - Last night at The Eversley - 1
25-Nov-08 - Homage to Catalonia tasting, London
26-Nov-08 - Valencia tasting, London
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01-Dec-08 - An unusual birthday card
04-Dec-08 - Mad dash to Montreuil for a potato tasting, and a lost passport
07-Dec-08 - Memories of Roussillon (with video)
24-Dec-08 - Alicante tasting, and It's That Time of Year Again
29-Dec-08 - Christmas at The Eversley
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Christmas at The Eversley

2008-12-29T10:18:00.000Z

29-Dec-08 - We had a busy and very merry Christmas this year as James and Claire came down, as well as Claire's father Graham and brother Simon, so it was a full house all round, and I'd been saving up some special wines for the event. We decided to kick off on the 23rd with some proper fish and chips from our local chippie, as a preparation for the marathon task to come. Fortunately we're just across the road from the Chipwick, and the trick is always to ask for a large cod, extra well-done. That way, although you have to wait, the fish is cooked freshly and you know that it hasn't been languishing in the hot cupboard going soggy. Actually Claire had the huss, which I can never face, having chopped up so many dogfish for A-level zoology.

I'd ordered a random case from The Wine Society and we tried a bottle of 2008 Chamonix blanc, Franschhoek Vallée des Vignerons, South Africa - Chardonnay/Sauvignon Blanc/Chenin Blanc - £6.25) which we'd never had before: bone dry, delicious, controlled fruit and a lovely fresh finish - and closed with the beguiling glass Vino-Lok stopper which, for some reason, I find irresistible. Even Jill liked it and she normally won't have anything to do with Chardonnay (unless it's from Chablis, of course, "but that's different"). It was perfect with the fish, and we followed it with another from the random case: 2007 Picpoul de Pinet from Domaines Félines-Jourdan, Languedoc (£6.75). This again was bone dry with a zesty acidity and lovely fruit freshness. I think that these two wines represent some of the best value for money I've seen this year, and are living proof (for those few who still need it) that spending just a bit more will get you a lot better wine. Unfortunately it ran out just before the fish, so I opened a bottle of the barrel-fermented 2006 Colección 125 from Bodegas Julián Chivite in Navarra (£21.37 from Waitrose - Fernando Chivite very kindly sends me a few bottles every Christmas). The grape is Chardonnay (so Jill was out) but James and I enjoyed it: rich, greengagey Chardonnay fruit with a smoky background of toasty oak - wonderful. The grapes come from the Señorío de Arinzano estate, from whence also come the Pago wines (see previous post 11-Nov-08), but not at Pago prices - although they are, of course, wines at the premium end of the market.

Christmas Eve we were joined by Graham and Simon and got tooled up to approach Jill's special recipe crispy duck with hoy sin, cucumber, spring onions and rice pancakes. This is something she's developed, bit by bit, over the years and now cooks to perfection every time - and the entire family is duck mad. It's fairly spicy, of course, so we needed something fairly robust, and I opened a couple of bottles of the 2000 Clos Monlleó from Sangenís i Vaqué in Priorat. This is a wine I discovered in 2003 when we were doing a mega-tasting for the 2004 edition of THE NEW SPAIN: we tasted some 700 wines blind over a week and a bit, and I scored two of them at 19½/20. One was Clos Monlleó (the other was Vall Llach, also from Priorat). This is a family firm run by Pere Sangenís, his wife Conxita Vaqué and their daughter María, and I actually got to meet them in April, 2005, when I was speaking at a conference in Rotterdam - most charming and generous people. They didn't - and still don't - have an agent in the UK, which is a great pity because the wines are simply outstanding. All right, Monlleó retails at €40 in Germany and up to $65 in America (depending on which state you're in) but as a special-occasion wine it's unbeatable. The family very generously send me a few bottles each Christmas and with the duck it was spot on. It's made from the classic old-vines Garnacha and Cariñena and has all the power, structure and majestic fruit we've come to expect from Priorat - sublime.

Christmas day started with bacon and eggs and Cava - Jill takes Cava intravenously and likes it absolutely bone dry. Our everyday brand is Calamino from Majestic (at a ridiculous £4.99 on multibuy). It's made by the Codorníu group which, of course, has massive economy of scale as well as nearly a century and a half of experience. The result is clean, fresh, and simply delicious and we demolished a couple of bottles between us before getting to the marmalade. Christmas lunch was spatchcock guinea-fowl with stuffing, roast potatoes, sprouts and chestnuts, Jill's special roast root vegetables plus a big bowl of cabbage for James, which he seems to like. For this I'd saved a bottle of 2002 Divo from Ricardo Benito, Vinos de Madrid. I was fortunate enough to visit the bodega in November 2006, just after I'd voted it my top wine of Spain in the 2006 WINE REPORT, and we enjoyed it on that occasion with the traditional madrileño cocido - a stew of chickpeas, cured meats and, well, anything you have lying around, cooked in the traditional way in an iron pot by the fire in the hearth. It was splendid and, better still, they gave me a bottle to take home. It's made from old-vines Tempranillo and has a wonderfully complex structure, bags of fruit and just the right amount of oak. I presented it at the 2007 DECANTER Fine Wine Encounter, at which time it was retailing in the UK at about £85 a bottle, but since then, of course, the pound has gone through the floor, and I see that Divo is retailing in Barcelona at €140 currently, which is £134 at today's exchange rate. It was splendid with the guinea-fowl, although I did feel that another year or two in bottle would have brought out its full panoply of flavours, but that's my fault for opening it too soon. For the follow-up James rooted out a dust-encrusted bottle of 1990 Pata Negra Gran Reserva from Señorío de Los Llanos in Valdepeñas. Unfortunately the cork had completely dried out at the top and crumbled away as I inserted the corkscrew. This did not bode well, and I had to filter the wine while I was decanting it, which is a tricky business. The end result was drinkable but rather faded. Mental note - drink Valdepeñas Gran Reserva before it's ten years old.

The pièce de resistance (also uncovered by James encrusted in dust) was my last remaining bottle of the 1970 Warre's Tercentenary Port. Simon had brought half a ripe Stilton and this was going to be the perfect combination - a top vintage with 38 years in the bottle. Ominously, the cork on this, too, crumbled away as I tried to open it and I had to do the filtering/balancing act again. It worked, indeed it was very drinkable, but somehow the wine didn't have the power and fragrance I was expecting, and I began to worry about some of the other old bottles I keep in the same rack, including a 1963 Croft (which I bought for £1.30 in 1975) and a 1955 Gould-Campbell (£4.05). Plainly the atmosphere is too dry: I shall have to invest in a pair of Port tongs.

So we went on variously to Janneau Armagnac and Woodford Reserve Kentucky Bourbon to top off the evening.

On Boxing day Simon and Graham were off home, so it was just the four of us for dinner and, Jill being a bit 'cooked out' we decided to have a 'cheese night', with a whole Mont d'Or, the Stilton, some Camembert, a Dickinson and Morris Melton Mowbray pork pie and Garner's pickled onions. On cheese nights Jill bakes a ciabatta bread and we dip it in the melting Mont d'Or before (in this case) falling upon the Stilton once again. I had chosen a 2004 Hayes Ranch Shiraz from California (£5.95 from my random case) but James had already disappeared off to the wine rack. Returning with a 2000 Bodegas Palacio Reserva Especial and I have to say that it was an excellent choice. The wine decanted perfectly and was well into the early stages of maturity, still with working tannins but absolutely perfect with the Mont d'Or - effortlessly matching the richness of the cheese. We followed it with the Hayes Ranch Shiraz, which may not have had the subtlety and complexity of the Rioja, but whose big blockbusting fruit was a very good match for the pork pie and pickles.

James and Claire headed home on the Saturday after a bacon, egg, black pudding and haggis brunch and we had a rather quieter day, but it had been an altogether excellent Christmas. I may stop eating and drinking for several days.

It's That Time of Year Again

2008-12-24T10:33:00.001Z

A merry Christmas to both our readers!

Alicante revisited

2008-12-24T09:13:00.000Z

24-Dec-08 - I mentioned in an earlier post (26-Nov-08) that I'd been to a tasting of wines from the Comunidad de Valencia including the DDOO Alicante, Utiel-Requena and Valencia, and I listed some of the wines which had showed particularly well. There was, however, no mention of any wines from the DO Alicante. This is because there was only one bodega there from Alicante - BOCOPA - and I didn't score any of their wines over 16 - I usually only mention wines which I marked at 17 or more.

A couple of weeks later I had an e-mail from Patricia Carbonell, who is in the bodega's export department, asking me if I'd accept some samples, presumably as a result of their non-appearance in the previous post - I offer a consultancy service to wineries aiming at the UK market. They duly arrived and we tasted them over a period of about a week. The wines were all from the bodega's LAUDUM range which, on their website consists of four reds and a white, but in practice has a rather wider scope. At the tasting they were showing Laudum Crianza (Monastrell/Cabernet-Sauvignon/Merlot - 16/20) and Laudum Nature (Monastrell/Cabernet-Sauvignon/Tempranillo - 15/20) which both had a pleasant enough style, although I felt at the time that the ex-cellars price of the Crianza would have made it too expensive on the UK market - approximately £7.99 retail then, now probably £8.49 thanks the strength of the euro and the gink with the eyebrows. There's a lot of competition in that sector of the retail market in the UK but, of course, ex-cellars prices are always negotiable.

The samples also included other wines from the range but no prices, so I can't comment on the value-for-money aspect. These were the best: Laudum Reserva 2001 (Monastrell/Cabernet-Sauvignon/Merlot - quite impressive maturity and a nice richness on the finish - 17/20); Laudum Garnacha Syrah 2006 (a very nice ripe, fresh fruit, delicious - 17/20); Laudum Monastrell Especial 2006 (big, blockbusting fruit, powerful, warm and long - 17/20); and Laudum Petit Verdot 2006 (this grape really has made itself at home in southern Spain: big fruit, warmth, power, structure and complexity on the finish - 17½/20).

These are very good wines and all too often people tend to look askance at wine produced by co-operatives, not just in Spain but everywhere in Europe. What these people need to accept is that, with 325 ha of vines (in this case), if the winemaker has a free hand in terms of grape selection, there's no reason at all why co-ops shouldn't produce high-quality, even great wines.

Memories of Roussillon

2008-12-12T07:44:00.000Z

07-Dec-08 - We went on a Circle of Wine Writers trip to Roussillon in June last year which I remember as being an excellent set of visits and a real eye-opener as to what's happening in the region. I particularly recall the wonderful landscape and the wide variety of the wines - the classic sweet styles and some startlingly modern examples. I was also fascinated to see that town and village name signs were given in French and Occitan, but apparently most people at home speak Catalan. The Hotel Les Vignes in Rivesaltes (very comfortable, excellent value - €36 a night - by the way, and run by a most charming couple who speak perfect English - +33-4-6864-3434) was flying the French, Catalan and EU flags.

Also on the trip was Per Karlsson, a CWW member from Sweden, and I hadn't realised that he was shooting video until last week when he sent me a couple of samples featuring me lurking somewhere in the background. The first is from our visit to Domaine Boucabeille in Corneilla de la Rivière on Wednesday 13-Jun-07 and features Jean Boucabeille, son of the house, who currently runs the show. The vineyard behind him is entirely worked by hand and they don't even use tractors. He told me the reason why is that tractors compact the soil and, in so doing crush the worms. A single worm, apparently, shifts a ton of soil in a full year, and that turnover is vital for aeration, drainage and for the other minute wildlife which make the soil what it is... And it's the soil which grows the vine. Watch the video here and you'll see that we were tasting his wines under a bower in the vineyard, with me interviewing Jean for a feature on Splash FM. His wines were excellent, and I gave five of them 17+: Monte Negro 2005 (Grenache/Syrah - 'meaty' fruit, complex and minerally - 17); Monte Negro 2004 ('the extra year in bottle really shows' - 17); Les Orris 2004 (Syrah/Mourvèdre/Grenache - big Syrah style with power and weight, mature - 17; Les Orris 2003 (even better -Rhônish in style with big Syrah 'beef' - 17½) and the 2002 (17 - Philglas & Swiggott £16.99).

Another memorable visit was to Domaine Matassa in Calce the following day, with winemaker Tom Lubbe. He's made wine in South Africa and Bordeaux and gave us a splendid picnic in a lovely, dreaming valley, with a tasting of his wines in a roofless shelter in the middle of the vineyard. I interviewed him for my radio feature as well - watch the video here. Tom is something of a perfectionist - "you can only make beautiful wine in a beautiful place" - and describes himself as a 'non-interventionist winemaker. We tasted four of his wines with an excellent tapas lunch, and they all scored 17+. Cuvée Marguerite 2006 (Viognier/Muscat barrel-fermented - big, soft but 'savoury' fruit. minerally, delicious - 17 - Waitrose £17.57); Matassa Blanc 2004 (Grenache Gris/Macabeu - lovely big 'savoury' fruit, complex, herby spicy, fab - 18 - Bordeaux Index £17.78); Cuvée Romanissa 2005 (Grenache/Carignan.Mourvèdre - big, soft, dark, subtle, musky fruit - 17 - Bordeaux Index £14.50); Matassa Rouge 2005 (old-vine Grenache - rich, big fruit yet lovely freshness - 17).

Perhaps most memorable visit was next day to the Château de Jau in Cases de Pène, which is a grand old house with a modern-art gallery and a wonderful restaurant terrace under what is claimed to be France's oldest mulberry tree (they used to make silk here). The restaurant operates in the summer months, and, rather unusually, you order by the wine, and with the wine comes the food - locally produced sausages and lamb cutlets, cooked over sarments in a big outdoor oven. The whole thing is run by the strikingly-attractive Estelle Dauré who told me that "there is no jaja without Jau". I think I know what she meant... We tasted La Jaja de Jau which is a simple, everyday red ('good glugging stuff') but the best wine of the day was the Château de Jau 2003 (Syrah/Mourvèdre/Grenache/Carignan - excellent power, weight and structure, complex length - 17). The Château's traditional sweet wines are stocked by Les Caves d e Pyrene.

Interviewing Estelle Dauré at the Château de Jau

Trains, Potatoes and the M25

2008-12-05T08:34:00.000Z

04-Dec-08 - [Anorak alert - there's rather a lot about trains in this post] The day did not start well. I left the house at 05:15 in driving rain and a force-8 gale coming in from the north east, and the taxi dropped me at Worthing station ten minutes later. The doors to the station were locked. A member of staff appeared with a bunch of keys and attempted to unlock them, but without success. He disappeared, and came back with another bunch of keys, but this, too, proved to be of no avail. "You'll have to go round by the gate" he shouted to me... And I trudged off in the pouring rain, half the length of platform three, through the disabled-access gate and all the way back down the platform to the ticket machine (the booking office isn't open at this time of the morning), and then through the underpass to platform 2. The London train was on time, and I'd checked the timetable before I left: change at Three Bridges for Redhill. I was surprised at how busy the train was at this time of the morning - by the time we reached Hove it was full, and from Haywards Heath standing room only. I looked around the carriage and wondered if these people had to do this every day to get to jobs in London: I count myself lucky that I mainly work from home.

Got off at Three Bridges which has one of the most windswept platforms I've ever visited. There is cover from the rain, except that the wind was blowing it sideways and it was absolutely freezing - I even saw some sleet. There is a small, unheated waiting room and the door is on the wrong side for the up platform, but I took refuge anyway, and watched a Victoria train come and go from the platform opposite. This was to be my undoing. I returned to the platform on which I had arrived to find that the Thameslink train did not stop at Redhill, and I was advised to change at Gatwick. I did manage to squeeze myself into a seat, wondering the while why the timetable had told me this train stopped at Redhill. I checked 24 hours later and realised that the Victoria train I'd seen had been the one which stopped at Redhill: the station has two up platforms, and I had been on the wrong one. At Gatwick I was directed from platform 4 to platform 1, but at least they have working escalators there, and I caught the next Redhill train with a few minutes to spare, arriving about 20 minutes late.

From then on, however, it was to be plain sailing, wasn't it? Peter Marshall, the publisher of YES CHEF! Magazine was waiting for me and we set of for the Channel Tunnel. The wind, rain and spray on the M25 would have done justice to a deep-sea fishing expedition, but we got to Folkestone in just over an hour for the 09:05 shuttle (they're only running them every 90 minutes on weekdays at the moment). Interestingly, there were almost no formalities on the way and, significantly, there was no-one at passport control. This was to have repercussions later.

We were on our way to a potato tasting at the Château de Montreuil in Montreuil-sur-Mer, an excellent place and somewhere I've visited a number of times before, most recently in the autumn of 2006 on a day-trip from Shoreham to Le Touquet with James and Claire. This, by the way, is an excellent jaunt, or at least it is if you live only three miles from Shoreham airport. Ten minutes in a cab to the airport, half an hour's check-in, a 45-minute flight and a 25-minute cab ride to Montreuil - less than two hours door-to-door. By car via the tunnel it's about three hours door-to-door from The Eversley on a good day (assuming you haven't just missed a shuttle) which, when you consider that LHR is a good hour-and-a-half's drive and the ridiculous two-hour check-in regulations means that you've arrived before you'd even have got on the 'plane to fly to France.

The Château was built by the Wooster family (no relation) in 1933 as a holiday home and has a lovely, relaxed feel, from its architecture to the gardens and the interiors. Chef-patron is Christian Germain who, with his English wife Lindsay, runs a very genial, comfortable and delightful establishment. Christian is an alumnus of The Waterside Inn and regularly entertains Michel Roux and other members of the Roux 'club'. Today was no different: he was cooking alongside Pierre Koffman, late of La Tante Claire, who was the first head chef at The Waterside Inn under Michel, and the subject was potatoes. We were also joined by Claire Harrison, the 'Potato Princess' who seems to know more about the vegetable than anyone else in the world, except perhaps Alexis Dequidt of Touqet Savour, a company which grows and sells only potatoes, all over France. The fully detailed article will appear in the January, 2009 issue of YES CHEF! Magazine, so for the moment let's just say that we tasted more than a dozen varieties, roast, baked, mashed and chipped and as crisps, in salads, with herring, oysters (not for me), snails and the most magnificent rib of beef, washed down with a very decent bourgeois claret. I have to say that the humble potato is my 'desert island' food: so versatile that you can make anything with it (I've even heard of a potato bread-and-butter pudding) and absolutely delicious. Indeed, the night before Jill had found some Shetland Black potatoes at Waitrose and baked them. They're small but they bake beautifully. The lunch was a splendid exercise, in excellent company.

Anyway, we had to dash before 14:30 to get the 16:07 shuttle, and got there in good time, which was just as well. I mentioned that there was no-one at passport control on the way out - well, on the way back I realised that my passport had disappeared. Couldn't find it anywhere. Fortunately I keep a scan of the main page on my laptop, and I also have a photocard driving licence, so I cast myself on the mercy of the man in the booth, and was able to give him the passport number and other details from the scan. It was obvious from his questions that, once the number was typed in on the computer, all my details came up on the screen. Indeed, I suspect that the government has huge databases on all of us, probably including how we voted at the last election and the size of our most recent drinks bill. We had to hang around a bit as the time crept on, but eventually they came up with a couple of forms to fill in and sign. If I do find the passport (and this could mean ringing around everywhere we went that day) it will now have been cancelled anyway so it's going to cost me £72 for a new one, but at least we got through... We were the very last car on the shuttle, and we arrived back at Folkestone at about 15:50.

So far, so good. On the way back we decided to go to Gatwick rather then Redhill: it's (theoretically) easier for me because I can get a direct train to Worthing, and although the detour off the M25 is about 4 miles longer than that for Redhill, it's all motorway rather than suburban streets. I got to the station (it's a long walk into and out of the South Terminal first) about 17:15 and realised I was in the 'black hole' in the railway timetable. Normally trains run half-hourly, but the next direct train wasn't until 17:58, and I didn't fancy freezing to death on the platform (surely Gatwick is the most inhospitable of stations, presumably because if you go upstairs to the airport terminal it's full of shops and bars, so they don't feel that they need to have anything on the platforms. There was a southbound train due and, owing to a fault in the system, it was posted as calling first at Eastbourne. This was patently wrong, so I got on with a view to changing at Haywards Heath, one stop down the line. Needless to say the train was packed so I had to sit in first class. There was a guard on board, but he didn't venture between the people-crushed aisles. At Haywards Heath I crossed platforms to find that the direct train from London Bridge was due in a few minutes, and wondered how I could have missed it at Gatwick if it was following so close behind. Could I have been on the wrong platform? Again? Twice in one day? I checked afterwards and realised that the London Bridge train doesn't stop at Gatwick - and I thought I knew my way around the railway timetables. It was packed, of course, and I sat in first class, quite willing to pay the extra in return for the luxury of actually having a seat on the train but, again, no-one came. So I was home before 18:30 and getting stuck into a large one moments later, having covered about 380 miles in just over 13 hours.

I did rather better than Peter. He rang me at 19:30, two and a half hours after he'd dropped me at Gatwick, to say that he had progressed just ten miles since then. Apparently a lorry had spilled some gas canisters on the road and the Police had closed it. When things finally got moving again they were slowed down by an unrelated car fire on the opposite carriageway with traffic slowing down to look at it, of course. I think even a sardine-tin train is better than trying to use the M25 after 5 o'clock.

Front Page Coverage

2008-12-02T09:30:00.000Z

01-Dec-08 - Another year, another birthday, and another opportunity for James to show off his weird sense of humour, thanks to Moonpig. This was his card:

Mind you, I really was in the pages of OK! magazine once... Here it is - With Marco Pierre White's ex-wife Mati in happier times: 2001 to be precise, when I was doing some consultancy work for the relaunch of Tío Pepe.

Wines of Valencia

2008-12-01T07:49:00.000Z

26-Nov-08 - Valencia tasting at the former Great Eastern by Liverpool Street station in London (now known as the Andaz) for a full-day tasting of wines from the Comunidad de Valencia (DDOO Alicante, Utiel-Requena (UR), Valencia (V) and Cava (C) as well as the odd VdM), organised by the Chamber of Commerce of Valencia in Spain using UK-based Hispanic Consulting (see the Rueda tasting 21-Oct-08). Tasted 54 wines and was rather impressed. I did this tasting (not necessarily with the same group of bodegas) just over a year ago and thought then that the wines were improving strongly, but another year and another leap in quality. People tend to think of Valencia as a never-ending fount of good value-for-money supermarket-level wines and, indeed, it is, but there is more. My 17+ picks below, and prices (where I was able to get them) are calculated according to the JR consultancy spreadsheet (and I have erred on the high side) as to what they would approximately be at retail in the UK (allowing for the knee-jerk changes in duty and VAT from 01-Dec-08 by the gink with the eyebrows):

Agro de Bazán (UR) - 2006 Mas de Bazán Crianza Merlot - £10-£11 - I know this bodega from the parent company in the DO Rías Baixas where they turn out an excellent Albariño, but this was good, well-structured red with good balance an just enough oak to showcase the fruit. 17/20.
2007 Mas de Bazán Rosado is a Bobal, Merlot and Cabernet-Sauvignon mix and I wrote "delicious glugger, 'nouveau' style, aromatic, perfumed, simple, delicious". 17/20.

Sebiran - NV Coto d'Árcis Brut (C), Macabeo - £9 - The mousse didn't look much in the glass but GB it exploded powerfully on the palate. Hint of autolysis on the nose, and warm, toasty, spicy, long finish. Very good. 17/20.
2007 Coto d'Árcis Bobal (UR) - £5-£6 - smoky nose, big, crisp fruit on the foretaste, big structure, style, a bit austere at the moment but has potential. Needs time. 17/20.
NV Coto d'Árcis Brut Especial (C), Macabeo - £11-£12 - Good mousse, lovely structure with power, weight and excellent fruit balance. Complex finish. Excellent. 18/20.

Coviñas (UR) - 2005 Aula Crianza Merlot - £7-£8 - Bright perfume, big fruit and structure on the mid-palate, oak noticeable, austere finish but lovely complex structure. Needs time. 17/20.
An honourable mention here to Viña Enterizo Rosado (Bobal) and Viña Enterizo Tempranillo, both well-made and very acceptable wines (16/20) - but at a price which could see them on UK shelves at the magic £3.99 a bottle.

Emilio Clemente (UR) - 2004 Emilio Clemente Crianza, Tempranillo, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, Bobal - £12-£13 - 'Nicey-spicy' nose with deep dark fruit, big structure on the mid-palate with good fruit balance, lotsa tannin but the fruit is fighting through. 17/20.
2004 Peñas Negras, Tempranillo, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, 5 months French oak - £6-£7 - Dark fruit nose, some austerity but good structure, nice fruit balance on mid-palate. Needs a bit more time. 17/20.

Chozas Carrascal (V) - 2007 El Cabernetf de Chozas Carrascal - £17 - The subscript 'f' gives away that this is Cabernet-Franc (not permitted in the DO Valencia) and not Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine is very good, however, if rather closed on the nose. The palate offers big structure and lots of mineral fruit, it needs time. 17/20.
Las Ocho - £11-£12 - This made from eight varieties (hence the name) and has an almost tobacco-y nose with big Cabernet-Sauvignon fruit on the palate with a lot of tannin (but enough, not too much) and a long, rich finish. 17/20.

Dominio de la Vega - NV Cava Brut (C), Macabeo - £8-£9 - Some autolysis on the nose and a good mousse, clean fresh and delicious on the palate, although perhaps just off-dry. 17/20.
NV Cava Rosado (C), Garnacha - £8-£9 - Some rich fruit on nose and palate, but the finish is bone dry. Delicious. 17/20
NV Cava Rosado (C), Pinot Noir - £13-£14 - With 20 months on the lees this has a gentle strawberry perfume and lovely, balanced fruit. 17/20.
2006 Cava Brut Nature Reserva, 80/20 Macabeo/Chardonnay - £16-£17 - Very clean, dry, 'chalky' Chardonnay noticeable on the nose and a crisp, clean bone-dry finish with lipsmacking acidity. 17/20.
NV Artemayor Cava (C), 60/40 Macabeo/Chardonnay - £22 - Barrel-fermented base wine with six months in new French oak and 36 months on the lees gives this a wonderful richness and a long, smooth finish. Class! 18/20.
2004/5/6 Artemayor (UR), Bobal - Single vineyard Bobal with 16 months in oak gives subtle power and fruit on the nose, big fruit and commensurate tannins on the mid-palate and a warm, spicy, oaky length with a hint of bonfire. Complex and starting to drink excellently. 18/20.

Sierra Norte Ecovitis (UR) - 2005 Cerro Bercial Premium Ladera Los Cantos, 63/37 Bobal/Cabernet-Sauvignon - £15-£16 - Smoky-oaky, tight, dark fruit nose and very tight tannins on the palate but big structure and a long, warm finish. There is much potential here. 17/20.

Señorío de Villafames (VdM) - 2002 Fernando Diago, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah - £14-£15 - Raisiny fruit and a 'hidden' richness on the nose, big fruit, power and spice on the plate, and a long finish. 17/20.

Finca Ardal (UR) - 2003 Lagar de Lar Crianza, Tempranillo, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot - £13-£14 - Dark Tempranillo fruit on the nose, big structure, power and fruit, tannins also big but in balance, long. Excellent. 18/20.
2005 Ocho Cuerdas Bobal - Dark, spicy, peppery nose, big fruit and tannins on the palate and a long finish but this needs more time. 17/20
2005 Ocho Cuerdas Crianza, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah - £11-£12 - rather closed on the nose, but some hints of fruit, good, big stuff with power, weight and concentration. Good length. 17/20.

Pago Casa Gran (V) - 2006 Falcata, Monastrell, Garnacha Tintorera, Syrah, Cabernet - £9-£10 - Rich, 'dark chocolate' nose, big, rich structured, complex palate with a powerful finish.
2007 Repos, Moscatel, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer - £6-£7 - Spicy Moscatel nose, very clean, crisp acidity with musky fruit and bone dry on the finish. Delicious. 17/20
2006 Falcata Arena, Monastrell, Garnacha Tintorera - £14-£15 - Another Biggie: power, oaky vanilla, toast and big, dark fruit, beautifully integrated. Long. 18/20.

Romeral Vinícola (UR) - 2008 Castillo Requena Rosado, Bobal - £5-£6 - Very crisp, fresh, strawberry-scented fruit, delicious, gluggable, uncomplicated bright fruit. 17/20.
2002 Lomas del Castillo Reserva, Tempranillo, Bobal - £5-£6 - Soft, subtle fruit with a hint of richness on the nose, some austere tannins but the fruit fights through on the mid-palate, long, very good. 17/20.

Overall, the tasting showed that the Valencia region, whilst still able to turn out good, everyday wines at supermarket prices, is also producing wines of considerable class higher up the price scale sometimes, perhaps, a little ambitiously priced but nevertheless reflecting an enormous amount of hard work by the bodegas - my lowest mark of the whole tasting was 14/20, which is well with the limits of acceptability.

The tasting also changed my opinion of non-Catalan Cava. In general I've always found these wines pleasant, uncomplicated and decent but uninspiring, as they tend to be 100% Macabeo which is something of a neutral grape. However, the wines on show here were very different: judicious use of oak for some of the base-wines and (I never thought I'd hear myself say this) some Chardonnay, plus long ageing on the lees really does deliver results.

Homage to Catalonia

2008-11-30T15:32:00.000Z

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

2008-11-29T13:21:00.000Z

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

2008-11-25T08:29:00.000Z

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

2008-11-25T08:16:00.000Z

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

2008-11-20T06:46:00.000Z

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

2008-11-20T06:31:00.000Z

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

2008-11-18T10:05:00.000Z

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

2008-11-18T08:58:00.000Z

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

2008-11-18T06:48:00.000Z

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.

Magnificent Madeira... And Sparkling Vodka?

2008-10-31T16:11:00.000Z

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!

2008-10-24T14:49:00.000+01:00

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

2008-10-24T10:46:00.000+01:00

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

2008-10-24T09:09:00.000+01:00

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!'