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, indeed, 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.

Magnificent Madeira... And Sparkling Vodka?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fame at last!

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

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

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

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

Lunch at Pintxo People, Brighton

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wines of Rueda Tasting, London

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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