Vendage day three

After what seemed like minutes after I had fallen asleep my alarm clock woke me up at the unearthly hour of 7am. A quick shower to wake me up and dressed in my scruffy clothes we head down for the usual breakfast and then off to the cuverie. As we approach the doors, the air is rich with the aromas of the ferments, slowly bubbling away. It is quite dangerous entering the cuverie at this time, as the carbon dioxide slowly fills the room from the bottom up, and with ten or more vats slowly fermenting away, the room can fill up with CO2 quite quickly. So we have to set up a fan to blow the CO2 out of the room before we can enter it safely. I ventured in to help open the windows, and after a moment found myself quite out of breath and starting to feel light headed. So once it was safe to enter, we started our daily ritual, while Ed got on with the pigeage, I got to work taking the temperatures of all the ferments, and measuring the density.

We recieved the last of the Chambertin grapes, so once more the triage table was set-up and the grapes sorted. Its kind of a weird experience doing the triage, because you become so focussed on spotting the rotten grapes, and keeping an eye out for stones, twigs and leaves, that you actually start to feel motion sickness. As the grapes move across your vision on a white conveyor belt, you brain is telling you that you are moving sideways, but your ears are telling your brain that in fact you are not. The resulting confusion can cause some nausia, which indeed I did feel slightly. After clearing down and cleaning up, while Ed did the last pigeage of the morning, I finished off the density measurements of the white wines.

That afternoon we were left to our own devices as I wanted to visit Beaune and in particular a bookshop called the Atheneum. So after getting washed and changed, we bought a picnic from the Epicerie at Morey-St-Denis and headed off in the direction of Beaune, via Vosne Romanee, where we enjoyed our picnic sitting on a wall overlooking La Romanee.

After a brief roll through Nuits St Georges we headed into Beaune to find the Atheneum. Once there, it was like I'd died and gone to heaven. The place is kind of a temple to wine. I spent the best part of an hour in there, and spunked 179 euros. I got the Nouvel Atlas de Bourgogne by Sylvian Pitiot and Jean-Charles Servant, which set me back the best part of that 179Euros.

That night we dined at Jean-Christophe's farmhouse about 30km away from Beaune. As his wife Helene prepared another fantastic meal, Jean-Christophe raided his cellars to bring up some real gems, all from the Cotes de Beaune. One of the highlights was a 1996 Santenay 1er Cru which showed a little bit of bottle stink when it was first opened, and consequently Jean-Christophe took the opportunity to nip out for a crafty fag and fetch another bottle this time a 99. This gave us the ideal opportunity to taste them together once the 96 had been decanted, and while both were excellent, we all clearly had our own favourite. (the 96 by a long shot was the winner for me.) Jean-Christophe has a wonderful family, and made us feel welcome in their home, even sending us off into the night with a handful of apples picked from the many fruit trees in their spacious gardens. Once again another late night, and I collapsed into my bed lapsing into a deep peaceful sleep.

Vendage day two

After getting up at 7:30 for breakfast we were at the cuverie for a little after eight am. As Louis was ventilating the cuverie to remove the CO2 that built up over night a wonderfully yeasty smell surrounded the building. The rain continued to fall, as it would all day and into the night. This time it was my turn to plonge the wines, I was given the Cotes de Nuits vat.

Bloody hell it's hard work. I lacked the upper body strength to lift myself out of it, as I was in the juice up to my upper thighs, and the top of the vat was level with my shoulders, and in the end Ed and Louis had to lift me out with just less than half of the Vat punched down. So Christophe had to finish it off, and I set about doing the density and temperature measurements. Then after all the vats had been tested and where necessary pigeaged, we started the triage for the grapes that had arrived late last night. These were bourgogne pinot grapes and there was a fair bit of rot and other nastyness in the bunches. Then as Christophe and Louis Jnr washed the kit down, Ed and I went down to the cellar to measure the density of the musts.

Then it was onto a fabulous little bar, epicerie, boulangerie in Morey-St-Denis for a fantastic lunch. Whilst at lunch we found out that Bernard had send the pickers out that morning in the peeing rain and had taken on extra people to hold umbrellas over them, to try and shield the fruit from too much water. Then the fruit had been taken to a drying room, to try and remove any excess water. So after lunch Guillaume brought us the Chambertin grapes and again the triage table was set-up and the grapes sorted to remove the dross. While we cleaned down, the third pigeage of the day was taking place. By now Ed was going to just above waist level.

After everything was washed down, we had finished by about 5pm, so as the sky was starting to clear a bit, and we had a while until we were having dinner at Bernards house that night, Ed and I decided to explore the vineyards of Vosne Romanee and Nuits St Georges, including a visit to La Romanee. Obviously they get many visitors there, as there were signs posted asking us politely to remain on the road and not to enter the vineyard.

We were delighted and priviledged to be invited to Bernards house for dinner that night, where Bernadette his lovely wife prepared a fantastic meal, and needless to say we enjoyed some superb wines. But by about 9pm, my shoulders and underarms were starting to ache. I so badly wanted to soak myself in a bath, but alas our rooms had only showers. So another late night and with a full stomach I went to bed.

Vendage day one

After having arrived from Geneva the night before and been treated to an excellent meal by Bernard in a little restaurant in Gevrey, we awoke at a fairly tardy eight thirty for a traditional French breakfast of Croissants, Baguette and coffee, before Bernard collected us to take us to the cuverie in Chambolle Musigny. We kicked off straight away with the pigeage, with ed hopping into the Gevrey-Chambertin Clos de la Justice to do a bit of stomping.

While Ed was doing that, I was measuring the density's of the ferments using a mustometer. Each day we measured the density of each ferment and barrel of must to track their progress. Then mid morning the grapes for the bourgogne rouge arrived and we set-up the triage table and the giraffe to sort the grapes, removing the pourriture (rot). After that was done, we chaptalised two reds, the Volnay and the Cotes de Beaune. A small tank is filled with wine from the vats and we add a measured amount of sugar, stirring it constantly to ensure it all dissolves. Then it is pumped back over the skins to kickstart the fermentation. The last pigeage of the morning then took place before the very civilised practice of lunch. After a filling lunch we returned to the cuverie for a full afternoon of work. More grapes were arriving, some bourgogne and a small amount of the Chambertin. So again we set up the triage table and set about sorting the bad grapes from the good. Burgundy had suffered from hail early in the growing season, and this was evident from the bunches that came in with "red stones" as they called them. Dried out berries that had hardened as the damaged stems starved them of water and nutrients. The blackened stems were more prominent on the bourgogne grapes than the Chambertin, which overall was of a good quality this year, with great potential. After the triage, the equipment all needs to be thoroughly washed down before the final pigeage of the day. As we finished at 6:45pm and headed off to a small bar in Gevrey for a well earned beer with Christophe and Louis Jnr the clouds darkened and rain set in.

This was a worry for Louis, as the pickers had only brought in less than half of the grapes of Chambertin, and rain now, could cause problems if it diluted the grapes, not to mention the risk of rot. As we got ready for dinner the heavens opened and rain lashed down from the sky. As we dined that night with Louis Snr, Bernard and "Chef" Louis, their concern at the weather was obvious. We enjoyed a suberb dinner with some fantastic wines, including a very elegant Charmes Chambertin. The rain finally eased up late that night, but with frequent downpours during the night.

Im shattered, a bit stained and very humbled.

Its just coming up to midnight, and Ive just finished service in the Arkle for the evening. Its amazing to think that just this morning I woke up in Morey-St-Denis at a little after 7am local time, to make the fairly boring journey back to Geneva to return to "normality". I didnt really want to come back (to work anyway, I missed my wife and children of course!), but they say that all good things must come to an end, and my experience of the Vendage at Vallet freres was a very good thing. Their incredable hospitality and generousity in opening up their homes and their cellars to myself and Ed was a very humbling experience. I was quite sad last night leaving Louis Vallet's home after an unforgettable night of good food, great wine and enchanting company. They welcomed us into their lives with an openness and friendliness that touched us, and made the whole experience memorable. I cannot begin to thank them enough, but over the next few days I hope to post some of my wonderful experiences.

To Louis Snr, Bernard, "Chef" Louis, Jean-Christophe and their families I pass on my sincere thanks for your wonderful hospitality. Vous etes tres gentile.

Bernard, Louis and "Chef" Louis Vallet our generous hosts for the vendage.

The learning never ends

Found out that one of the best wine books to be printed over the last few years has just published it latest annual version. Edited by Tom Stevenson, the Wine Report 2007 is without any doubt the most comprehensive report on what has happened in the wine world over the last year and trends that will affect the upcoming year. All this insider information comes from the leading experts in their fields, Clive Coates, Serena Sutcliffe, David Peppercorn, Tom Stevenson, John Radford, John & Erica Platter, Huon Hooke, Tom Cannavan and the list goes on. Best of all , it will only set you back a tenner. Im picking up my copy tomorrow on the way to the airport, for a bit of plane reading.

Twelve hours to go.

Well in just slightly over twelve hours time, I will be in a jet plane flying off to Geneva before driving up to Gevrey-Chambertin for the harvest with Bernard Vallet. My case is almost packed, I think that Ive tied up the most important loose ends here, and all thats left to do is come in at 8am tomorrow and start off the stocktake. Hopefully I might get access to a computer and the internet over the next week and I will be able to post some pictures and updates on what Im up to, if not it will have to wait until Friday.

The Bells, the Bells.

Well it was more like the sirens actually, last night the fire alarms sounded half-way through a busy friday night service. Every chefs worst nightmare, luckily for us most of the guests were between courses or finishing them off. You see these days most kitchens have safety valves that shut the gas off when the alarms sound. Quite sensible really, as you dont want the kitchen blowing the building into matchsticks as the gas mains goes all Buncefield on us. So after persuading everyone to evacuate the restaurant and hotel (not really all that difficult when people realise that the kitchen with its gas main is next door), we spend the next ten minutes standing in the cold watching pissed up folks meandering up to the chefs with their inevitable "funny" comments - " Hey Gordon (Ramsay) did ya burn the toast again!!". After getting the all clear from the Snr Fire Officer we can re-enter the building and try to get the service back on track. Three things worked in our favour last night. 1) It wasnt too cold - the ladies that stood outside in their fancy dresses didnt freeze too much. 2) It wasnt raining 3) We had a really nice crowd of folks in last night, who were understanding, patient and didnt try to screw us for "compensation". That said we did a bit of pre-emptive striking and offered everyone a wee glass of champagne on the house to apologise for the inconvenience and disturbance to their meals. The kitchen got their groove back quite quickly and all was well that ended well. I love it when it all comes together nicely.

Close, but maybe a biscuit.

I was down in London yesterday attending the Academy of Food and Wine Service's annual academy awards. By virtue of me applying for a travel bursary with Kendall-Jackson, I was on tenderhooks waiting to see if I had been successful. As I met up with Robin Tookey from Kendall-Jackson, who was the person who ultimately decided who got the bursary, I found out that I had come a close second. So close in fact that he had decided to try and organise me a runner-up prize. It was good to get such feedback and for a chance to do some networking and meet some previous acquaintances and some new faces. I even got a veiled job offer!! Food for thought.

Stop press!! Dom Perignon 1959 Oenotheque

The neck just got brassier!!

Young Danny was showing the group of golfers round the cellar when he showed them the Dom Perignon Oenotheque wines. As we are a depositaire for the Oenotheque range we have a wide range of Oenotheque from 1959 to the latest release 1992. Bugger me if he hasnt gone and sold a bottle of the 1959 at £1500 a bottle. That makes out total sales of that vintage to five bottles. Pretty impressive.

I havent tasted it this time, but tomorrow I'll get young Danny to write a tasting note to post here himself. He deserves some major credit for that. Good arrows Dannyboy!!

This time next week...

Im gonnae be in Gevrey Chambertin up to my nuts in a vat of grapes crushing them with my feets the old fashioned way. But dont worry, my feet are really clean, no athlete's foot or verucca's on my feet. Being in a job that will often involve me being on my feet for the better part of the day, I do actually take good care of my feet. Each night after a short soak, I scrub the dead skin off with a pumice board, before rubbing Boot's Botanics overnight foot treatment into them. The lavender revitalises them and the witchhazel is an antiseptic which keeps them nice and healthy. My feet feel nice and refreshed in the morning. Wear proper cotton socks and not cheap nylon and wearing real leather uppers so that they can breathe also helps. Keeping them cooped up in plastic shoes or nylon socks encourages the feet to sweat and the materials just ensure that the sweat pools and gathers leading to athletes foot and other fungal nasties.

And on that pleasant note, its time I went home and washed my poor aching feet.

The force is strong in him.

Young Danny has been particularly impressive tonight. He's got some brass neck on him, but it seems to have paid off as he's just sold two bottles of d'Yquem to a group of eight golfers. One bottle of 1967 at £850 and one bottle of 76 at £530. Got to give him credit for the fact that he tried to get the geezer to go for the 1921 at £3950. But I suppose that sometimes that youthful exhuberance does indeed pay-off.

New Beers on the menu

On thursday next week we are changing the beers in the Library and Brasserie. This is the result of nearly two years worth of tasting and discussions with Wyn Reece of Fantone distribution. About a month or so ago, Andre, Henning and myself drove down to Altrincham to visit their HQ and taste a few beers. The visit was very educational for me, as beer is something that I havent really gotten into since my student days visiting the Camra beer festivals (a reasonably cheap way to get trolleyed!!).

So for me the beers that really stood out and excited my palate were these:

Little Creatures Pale Ale - a fantastic pale ale from Freemantle in Australia that is made by a consortium of winemakers including Janice McDonald of Stella Bella/Suckfizzle and Phil Sexton of Devils Lair and Giant Steps Winery. The bitter elements of the flavour come from their use of the whole hop flowers, and this is kept in balance with crisp grapefruity flavours with a touch of honeyed sweetness.

Orval - genuine Trappist beer from the Vallee d'Or in Luxembourg. Their use of wild natural yeasts results in a slightly sour edge to the otherwise hoppy, and autolytic yeasty flavours.

Mort Subite Kriek - one of my favourite beers of the tastings - a Lambic beer, that is one that is allowed to begin fermentation spontaneously from wild airborne yeasts. Cherries are added to the beer during fermentation to sweeten the otherwise sour flavour, giving the beer a bright reddish colour and a fine fruity flavour with real smoothness to it.

I must try and find a way of integrating some of these into the gastronomic menu, to create a wider tasting experience.

To London I must go

Im off down to London on thursday for the Academy of Food and Wine Service's annual awards luncheon. Ive applied for a travel bursary with Kendall-Jackson and the lucky recipient is being announced and awarded on Thursday at the lunch. So fingers crossed.

Then Ive got to rush back up here and get into work for about 7pm, as we have a few tables in that night. Gonna be a long day!!

Say what???!!

One of the things that most of us who work here love about our jobs is dealing with people. One of the things that most of us hate is dealing with people. Naturally being actively involved in the service of alcohol, we get to see people at their very best and sometimes at their very worst. Generally speaking we aim not to see them in that state, but alas some people just shouldnt be out in adult company.

Anyway, one of the joys of dealing with people is the number of insane questions that we face on a daily basis. Some are comical, many are interesting, more than a few are bizarre and some are just downright daft. We always try to respond in an appropriate manner, but sometimes it is hard. When the customer asks you if the pigeons are caught locally, what are we supposed to say?? I swear sometimes it is hard to keep a straight face.

Tempranillo Joven

Had a visit today from Duncan Ferguson and Susana Fernandez of Cascabel winery in McLaren Vale, South Australia. They had been showing their wines at a dinner last night at Establishment, and as I had been unable to attend they wanted me to see their wines, so they came to me. Im glad they did, for the wines that they showed me were fantastic and Im planning on putting one of them on by the glass in the Library.

The first red that I tasted from them was the Tempranillo Joven, which is a kind of spanish take on beaujolais nouveau. The idea is that the wine undergoes minimal oak and is usually released as soon after the vintage as possible. This is a bit easier in Australia were the grapes are often harvested from April onwards. The nose had loads of fruit character with no perceptable oak flavours. I wouldnt have guessed it was a tempranillo blind because Ive never tried a tempranillo without the more dominant oak characters. This wine has seen some oak though, three months in used french oak, just enough to take the edge off the fruit and add a bit of depth and a touch of tannin. Only 13% alcohol which is great. A good easy drinking red with loads of fruit character and some depth to it, I reckon this would make a good replacement for the Julienas we are selling by the glass just now.

A Down to Earth kind of wine

We hosted a lunch this afternoon in the Arkle for a _______ of hoteliers. (What is the collective noun for that?). For the starter they had a superb little bordeaux blanc from Chateau Bauduc. I first came across this wine when I worked at Amaryllis, as it is Gordon Ramsay's "house" wine. Back then Gavin and Angela had only been making the wine for about three vintages, and it was a good little wine, quite easy drinking, very pleasant and at a bargain basement price. Since then, they have invested huge amounts of time, and I suspect money into the estate, and the wines are seriously good, but they pretty much maintain that bargain basement price point. The 2005 Blanc is a blend of 90% Sauvignon and 10% Semillon to add a bit of body. It is crisp and fresh, with a refreshingly tangy acidity which worked really well with the cured scallop ravioli, and pea shoot bisque.

Gavin is coming over next year to do a gourmet evening in the Arkle, on Tuesday the 27th February. It is an interesting story that someday soon I ought to tell here.

PS a quick google search fails to enlighten me as to the collective noun for hoteliers, but it has thrown up these posibilities - an asylim of hoteliers (promising), a bed of hoteliers (appropriate) but my favourite - a charm of hoteliers.

Mouton Again!!!

I had an interesting conversation last night with one of the guests at Dining Club. The fellow is a regular at our gourmet evenings, and usually hosts a large table at almost all of the dinners. We were discussing the particularly fine red wine that I had selected to go with the main course. A 1994 Tenuta dell'Onellaia Masseto, 100% merlot, regarded as the Italian Petrus. Somehow we got to talking about other fine wines, and he told me a fantastic description for an 82 Mouton.

While dining at a friends house in Maryland, USA, they chose a bottle of 82 Mouton from his hosts extensively stocked cellar. While enjoying the wine, they got to talking about how you would describe such a divine wine, and Mr M. chose to describe it thus: "Imagine the most fantastically sexy pair of legs, clad in the finest, silkiest stockings. This mouton is like stroking the upper thigh of those legs" How cool is that!!!! I totally understood what he meant by that description, and so did many of the other gentlemen in the room last night!! So now Ive just got to get some 82 Mouton, so when someone asks me what it is like, well you know what Im going to say, dont you!

Coming back to earth.

I had a slightly humbling experience last night after work. I decided to just have a quick read through some of the postings on this blog, and I noticed a worrying trend. Almost all the wines that I have mentioned have been wallet-busters, three fugure plus wines. I almost convinced myself that I could justify them as exceptional experiences, but the fact is that it presents a very skewed perception of what our wine list at the Arkle is all about. I believe I have mentioned several times that we have high operating margins, and hence our prices are a bit higher that I would find ideal, but having said that there are some great bargains to be had on the wine-list, and now more than ever the list is starting to even itself out in the price brackets, with more wines now under £50. I still think that I have some ground to make up with this, but we are making real progress. So later today (time permitting) I plan to blog about a few of these bargains on the list, and try to create a bit more balance in the wines that I present. But forgive me for the odd indulgence when I get the opportunity to sell a blockbuster wine.

Wine Blog Wednesday - Champagne pt 2

Ran out of time, and had to go into service, so here is the remainder of my champagne selection for WBW. (http://becksposhnosh.blogspot.com/2006/08/lovely-jubbly-bubbly.html)

L Aubry fils, Brut Tradition, Premier Cru de Jouy-les-Reims, NV.
Meunier dominated champagne from a pair of twins, Pierre and Phillipe Aubry. They used to sell the majority of their fruit to Veuve Clicquot before branching out into their own production. They are fortunate to be in a position of farming vineyards planted to several little known varieties that due to vagaries in the Champagne AOC regs are still legal, such as Arbanne, Petit Meslier, Pinot Gris (known locally as Fromonteau). While the Champenois have shunned these varieties in favour of the more noble Chardonnay, Meunier and Pinot Noir, the brothers feel that they must have been grown for a reason, and that they contribute immeasurably to the overall blend of the wine.

Anyway I digress, for this wine is a blend of 40% Meunier and 30% each of Pinot Noir and chardonnay. The wine has a rich golden yellow colour to it, with a persistence of fine bubbles, and an impressive mousse. Very herbaceous on the nose with rye grass, cereal grains and germanic pumpernickel bread, followed by more fruity aromas. There are subtle aromas of whitecurrants and greengages with a hint of a floral character that I just can't pin down. These flavours are quite evident on the palate with a crisp green apple acidity that makes this a great aperitif wine. I would even be tempted to decant the wine, because it improves with opening, and the flavours become more pronounced and integrated with time in the glass. A great grower champagne for a few quid less than a grand marque!! We are selling this for £13.50 a flute at the moment, and the response has been very positive. I find this accents the flavours of a goats cheese tarte fine with roasted fig dressing quite well. (sorry no food porn to go with this. The files we have are enormous (5mb+ professional shots).

They do a wine which has the previously mentioned rarer varieties, which is called Le Nombre d'Or - Campanae Veteres Vites - which roughly translates as the Old vines of the country. It's a fantastic wine, that should be experienced at least once by anyone who loves champagne.

Wine Blog Wednesday - Champagne pt 1

Goodness gracious, thats another month flown by, and now its time for the next installment of WBW!! The host(ess) this month (http://becksposhnosh.blogspot.com/2006/08/lovely-jubbly-bubbly.html) has chosen a fantastic subject - Champagne, with extra brownie points for chosing a smaller producer. Ive got no end of ideas for what I wanted to show here, as this is a subject that I got really into quite recently, and boosted the wine-list by quite a few grower champagnes. Ive just added another four champagnes in the last three weeks, including three wines from Francis Egly of Egly-Ouriet. So Im gonnae start off with one of his wines.

Based around the Grand Cru village of Ambonnay, the house of Egly-Ouriet farms a modest 9 hectares of vineyards, 7 of which are devoted to Pinot Noir. With the majority of the wines sitting the right side of 30 years old, and a careful yield management which includes a vendage vert if neccessary, the production is kept to around 5 thousand cases, of which surpisingly little gets across to the UK. I was told by the merchant that supplied me, that his allocation of the brut nv is less than a dozen cases, he gets two or three cases of the rose, two cases of the blancs de noir, and about a half dozen bottles of the vintage. I guess Im lucky to have managed to get three bottles of the blancs de noir and rose then!! With this scarecity in mind, I made these notes last week, after selling a bottle (with the guests approval) to share them here today.



Egly-Ouriet Blancs de Noirs Grand Cru, Brut NV - Vielle Vigne de Pinot Noir Lieu-dit "Les Crayeres" a Ambonnay. Degorged July 2005.

It is a dark straw colour with very fine bubbles and a medium persistance of the mousse. On the nose I found an aroma of braeburn apples - those crisp greeny red efforts with a hint of sweetness to the fruit - with an exotic mushroomy character coming behind it. Almost like when the kitchen are prepping the cepes - more foresty wild mushrooms. The aromas were really quite dense with a rye bread aroma coming forward quite frequently. On the palate the bubbles dissolved effortlessly leaving flavours of wild fruits and slightly underipe pears with hints of cocao. The flavours seemed to remain on the palate for over a minute before slowly fading to more autolytic characters. As the back label states this has had 49 months on the lees, and with Egly's practice of minimal intervention in the winery and no filtration or fining of the base wines, the autolytic flavours are expected to be quite dominant, although they were never overbearing. Damn this is a great champagne and quite a bit beyond my means, so I was grateful to the generous customer who allowed me to sample their champagne. Bummer that Ive only got two bottles left!!
PS Im supposed to give some idea of what food this would go with, Sam's website being predominantly foodie, so I would put this wine with something like - Loin of Rabbit, with sweetbreads, seasonal mushrooms (Ceps, Girolles and shi-take) with a redcurrant reduction.

Time isnt in my hands

Busy week this week. Tonight we had a gourmet evening, (more about that tomorrow), tomorrow is Wine Blog Wednesday and this months theme is Champagne. Then on Thursday weve got Dining Club again, and Friday we have a function in the Arkle. Ive got loads going on in the cellar to get sorted out, and the paperwork mounts up. Wine suggestions, menu costings, wines by the glass to sort out, shopping lists to compile, gourmet events to finalise, and the list goes on. But its nearly twenty past one in the morning, and Ive got to be up early in the morning to take the wee man to playgroup. Also got to nip into Tesco's on my way home and get some bread, tights for the missus, and some other odds and sods. No rest for the wicked, and man I must have been a bad ass in my past life, cos this one's a bitch!! Karma baby!!

Chocolate

I started looking into chocolate, and the whole single plantation thing a little while ago. The whole thing started off while I was reading Indulgence by Paul Richardson, all about his passion for chocolate and his consequent travels around the world exploring its history, origins and passage across the continent. I found a great website (www.seventypercent.co.uk) that sells all these artisan chocolates from serious producers who source their cocoa pods from various estates around the developing world. Producers like amedei, michel cluizel, domori, Valrhona and El Rey, producing high cocoa content (65-90% cocoa mass). Then I found a shop in Alderley Edge which sells most of these products (Chocolate trading company). So I decided to drive out there yesterday and pay them a visit. It was a small little shop with a tiny little reception with about seven display cases laden with the various bars that are available. The woman was really helpful and obviously quite knowledgable about the products. I left nearly twenty quid poorer with a small selection box of Michel Cluizel chocolate squares from different estates around the world, a 50g bar of Amedei Chuao 70%, a bar of Amedei white chocolate and a bar of 62% madagascar chocolate, as well as a couple of little chocolate chicks for my wee boy Joshua who came with me!! I havent tried the Michel Cluizel chocs yet, but today I had a couple of pieces of the Chuao bar. Oh My God!! It is absolutely fantastic. Slowly letting the square melt on my tongue I was amazed at the really vibrant fruity character of the chocolate - plums, red berries, with a slightly spicy finish and touch of bitterness at the back. The chocolate was really fine and melted to a fine liquid with none of the grainyness you get from commercially produced mass market chocolate. It wasnt cheap at nearly a fiver for a 50g bar, but it is in a different league to the chocolate that I would normally eat. It has also ignited a desire to try more and learn more about chocolate as a product. After all it isnt a million miles away from wine in tasting terms.

Truly madly Mouton!

We sold another bottle of Mouton 90 tonight. Each time I smell that wine, it casts its spell on me. There is something about Mouton that bewitches you. It's layers of aromas that come undone like a pass the parcel present, each time something different comes in. Red fruit and forest berries, old port pipe tobacco and well seasoned leather, hints of xmas spices, breakfast prunes,mulberries and so many other flavours and aromas that it is hard to isolate them. Well now I need to source some more Mouton, because there isnt enough for the Gourmet Dinner in December. I might try and see if I can get some large format bottles. That would be so cool, pouring Mouton 1990 from an Imperial. They weigh a bloody ton, but it doesnt half look the part.

Fakes

I read the other day in Decanter that a prominent American collector of wine has recently discovered that a prize bottle within his collection has been outed as a fake. The bottle in question was sold as a 1784 Chateau Lafite said to belong to Thomas Jefferson. Now at the time of the purchase (late eighties) the bottles were authenticated by Christies experts. But when the owner lent them to a museum in Boston, the museum asked for authentication to prove the provenance of the bottles. It appears that at this stage the experts decided that the tools used to engrave the initials Th J on the bottles are not from the 18th century. Which raises an interesting point. It is likely that the engraving was added later, which obviously casts suspicion on them belonging to Thomas Jefferson. But Im unsure if the bottles actually date from the date stated. So technically are they fake? Im sure that the details that will emerge from this will make fascinating reading.

The issue of fakes is a very serious one that is on a massive increase. Serena Sutcliffe apparently commented last year that nearly twice as many 1945's were sold than were actually produced. However the bottles that they reject as suspected fakes often end up being sold through less diligent merchants and auction houses. With the hammer prices reaching four and five figures per bottle for some of these wines, it can represent some serious investment for the criminal gangs that perpetrate the counterfieting.

All of this gives me some cause for concern when we purchase our stock. This is why we use reputable merchants and only buy from recognised sources. The old adage that if it sounds too good to be true it usually is, holds especially true here. If it means that we pay a higher price for the products I would rather do that and be secure in its provenance than score a bargain that is a bit dodgy. Apparantly a lot of the fakes are seriously contaminated with methanol, which can result in blindness and serious liver damage and even death.

Wine-list 3.1 and counting

Well I got a bit of a body blow yesterday when Andre told me the MD didnt like the new wine-list. I had put a fair amount of thought and effort into it, and was quite pleased with the end result. Last night I had to strip it right back to basics, and I managed to keep the essense of the new look to it, so its a compromise that I can accept. The good news is the boss loves the new revised version 3.1 so we can go with the new list tomorrow.

The Harvest approaches.

The word is coming back from France that we are all set for the harvest visit at the begining of October. All I need to do now is get the boss to sign off on the visit. As I will be back in time for the weekend I dont think they will have any issues, and they owe me for ruining my holiday anyway, but I cant take anything for granted. Im really looking forward to going as it will be an amazingly educational visit. To actually be out in the vineyards, to be involved in the process of harvesting, processing the grapes and then actually turning it into wine will stick in my mind for many years to come. Many of my peers and colleagues have told me it is an invaluable experience that just brings to life all the theory and prose in the numerous text books we have studied during our careers.

Im hoping that we will have a bit of time to explore the region a little bit and I especially want to visit Beaune because there is a bookshop there that I plan to hammer the credit card in!!

Re-living the eighties.

As I walked round York the other day I noticed a lot of eighties style fashion on the young-uns (Oh my god!!! Im no longer a young-un myself). Even as you walk round the shops the muzak the store play seems to have a lot of eighties tunes or be in the style of. So tonight for my premature return from my holidays (NOT a happy bunny, neither is the missus!!) I though I would have a kind of eighties thing going on.

Philiponnat Clos des Goisses 1980 Champagne. - the original walled vineyard (Clos) in champagne, some thirty plus years before Krugs Clos de Mesnil, Clos des Goisses is as rare as hens teeth. Pinot dominated the fruit comes from a steep walled vineyard on the banks of the canal at Mareuil-sur-Ay. The wine has a beautiful straw gold colour with quite a vibrant mousse for a wine that is 26 years old. On the nose there is hazelnut latte with a hint of that seaweed that they wrap sushi with. Full flavoured with a slate like mineral flavour and an amazingly long length.

Opus One 1980. Second vintage made, and the first to be made available in the UK. When it was opened it seemed a bit dirty on the nose with an earthy farmyardy kind of aroma. Thankfully that soon cleared and we were left with quite fruity aromas of dark soft berry fruit with a mulberry and cedarwood overtone. The earthyness remained a bit, and I wonder if it maybe was a slight fault - perhaps Brett? But a good clear wine with quite a lot of fruit character considering it is over 20 years old.

La Fleur Petrus 1982. My favourite of the night. Tobacco and leather notes over a blackberry and redcurrant flavour with hints of granny's xmas pudding in for good measure!! One of my last two bottles, I reckon that I might have to try and source some more. It may well have been half the price of the La Tache that he was originally leaning towards, but this bottle would have knocked six bells out of the la tache and barely broken a sweat. Perfect complement to the duck.

Not too bad a night, considering.

And the winner is...............ME!!!!!!

I mentioned earlier that I had entered the Wine and Spirits magazine Sommelier Challenge (http://grazzac.blogspot.com/2006/07/wine-and-spirit-magazines-sommelier.html). Well its published in this months edition (September 2006) available from all good newsagents. And the good news is that I won!!! Out of four contestants, including Alan Holmes of Chewton Glen (ex Petrus) and Allessandro Marchesan from Zuma in Knightbridge I came top, how cool is that. I could do with the good news after the shitty week this is turning out to be. Maybe I will post about that later, depending on how certain things work out.

By the way the awful mug shot was about the best that I could do at short notice. I comes from a publicity shot taken when I had just started working here. We cropped in real tight to remove the cringeworthy pose with a bottle of Opus One.

Petrus 1981

Table of four, the name looks familiar, I hope it is one of our regulars. They drink decent burgundy and are nice easy folks to keep happy. On a busy saturday night the more easy table the better. Especially as Danny is away on holiday. Anyway as the guests roll in, they look familiar, but it isnt who I hoped it was. Pre-dinner drinks, canapes, Paco takes their food order and all seems well. I glance over at the "host" who's immersed deep in the wine-list oblivious to all around him. So I give him some time and approach the table.

"Whats this like?" he asks pointing to the Latour 1950. I compose my thoughts and tell him the truth. Its a mature claret with remnants of fruit flavour and character, but its not a wine to linger over. The last two bottles I served were flat by the time I had poured them into the glass. "Is that the only Latour you have?". Im afraid so, although I missed the boat this afternoon getting my purchase order for £2502 worth of claret. Didnt order any Latour because I couldnt afford it. So he flicks through a few more pages and settles for a Petrus 1981. Not a bad start to the night at £700 a bottle.

The wine was a bit hazy with a fine suspension of sediment (it was transported from the cellar in a dumb waiter). Not the best start. The nose was a bit restrained with elderberry, old leather and a hint of prune. I didnt actually taste it, because I had a mouthfull of Dry River Pinot noir 2004 just minutes earlier and the flavours were still doing the tango on my tastebuds. But truth be told, if I was paying £700 for it, I would be a bit disappointed. Other than that, a pretty vanilla night. Everything went quite smoothly and Ive just got about six hours to do tomorrow with the stocktake then Im off for nine days. Bliss.

Best Pinot Noir outside of Burgundy

In anticipation of the new wine list we've done a bit of shopping. As part of that Ive managed to get my hands on six bottles of one of the most expensive pinots outside of Burgundy - Dry River Pinot Noir. Coming from Martinborough on the North Island of New Zealand, Dry River has an excellent reputation for its wines. Headed by Dr Neil McCallum their wines are almost all sold on allocation with about 40% being exported. Top of the range is the Pinot Noir. This is a beastie of a wine - black tea and sticky bun aromas round out with violets and alpine strawberries, with the same flavours on the palate and an undercurrent of red berries and cassis. There's also a sort of roasted cashew nut flavour that comes in and out of focus with fairly firm tannins. Really the 04 should be resting in a cellar somewhere for another few years before being listed, but it will drink well now with a decanting and at least an hour or so to open up.

Im led to believe that only six dozen bottles a year are imported into the UK, so we were very fortunate to lay our hands on six of them. But with the price tag of £115 a bottle, I doubt they will fly off the shelves. But then again if the price of the La Tache is too much for you, then I reckon this would make a reasonable alternative from the new world.

Dilemmas

As a sommelier I have to walk a fine line between between helpful and being percieved as a smart-ass know-it-all. ( I would like to state here that I have never, nor would ever claim to know it all. It really scares me how little I do know in the grand scale of things.)People get scared when they see me approach them. They think (again wrongly) that Im going to try and sell them that monster £5000 grand bottle they saw on the wine-list. Or that Im going to lord it over them making them look stupid in front of their dining companion(s). If I ever do any of the above please feel free to slap me!

I often find myself confronted with the dilemma of when to correct peoples misconceptions or enlighten their ignorance. When somebody tells me they dont like chardonnay then goes and orders a chablis, what am I supposed to do? Personally I feel obliged to point out to them somehow, that what they are really trying to say is that they dont like oaked chardonnay. Its a tricky thing to do without sounding patronising or being condescending. But I must point it out to them, if for no other reason than to allow them the opportunity to expand their knowledge of wine and try new things. After many years doing this, I think that I have managed to do it now without offending anyone, without being patronising, and without ever being condescending. And for the most part, people are happier that they now know a little bit more about wine, and feel that little bit more confidant when ordering wine in a restaurant.

See we not only provide food and wine, but education too. Isnt it a wonderful experience.

The Circus is in town.

I feel like one of those plate spinners at the moment, with four or five plates spinning on a pole, and trying to keep up with them all and making sure that I dont drop one. My first day back after five days off, and you spend the first hour or so catching up with the gossip, whats happened, any problems, any wines missing, have all the orders come in, are my new wines in yet etc etc. With it being Chester Races, the afternoon wasnt anticipated to be busy, although the Library was full. Now Ive only got two more days and Im off for nine days in total. But Ive got a ton of stuff still to do. The Brasserie wine list has been tasted and the new wines agreed. Ive costed them out and priced up the new wines. Now we need to confirm availability with the suppliers, vintages and try to manouvre the price down on those wines we want to offer by the glass.

Wine-list 3.0 has now evolved into 3.2, and is ready for the next approval, checking and proof-reading. We've tweaked the colouring a bit, added some underlining to highlight the headers and just made a few more cosmetic changes. Ive still got about twelve wines that havent made an appearance yet, so they need to be chased, and if neccessary re-ordered from alternative suppliers. Ive also been given £5000 to spend. £2500 on old claret and £2500 on other wines of my choice. The catch is the clarets need to be on Ross's desk for signature by the 31st (middle of my holiday) and the other £2500 gets signed off in a one-er too. So Im in the middle of trawling through broking lists and compiling my wish-list of one-off wines that will add a bit of fun to the list.

The cellar is a mess, and although technically that isnt really my responsability to sort out, I feel compelled to do it. Ultimately it is my cellar, so I need to be the guide when it gets organised so that when I take people on a cellar tour I know where stuff is. Thats the bugger of it, it's going to take a few days of concentrated effort to lick the place into shape, and I suspect that I'm going to have to draft in some help for that too. Well you cant have an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

On the subject of messes, the office is getting a bit dishevelled at the moment. The real pisser is that Ive been off for a week, and although Im the first to admit it wasnt sparkling clean when I left it was a hell of a lot better than it is now. I know Im gonnae get the blame for it being a dump as well, so Im gonna have tae clean her up on Sunday after we've finished the stocktake.

And Joy of Joys weve got our monthly chore of Stocktake to do on Sunday. This is going to be Mike's first solo stocktake, although he's going to have Will there as well. Im quite apprehensive about this one as theres been a lot of transition down there, and I got a bad feeling about the impending result. Of course that impacts where it really hurts - my paycheck.

So the plates are spinning, and I'd better get going and keep my eye on them.

Normal service might resume on Friday

Im off now for a few days R&R (with three kids I'll be bloody lucky {R & R ought to stand for riots and ruckus}). Back on Friday for the jamboree that we know and love as Chester Races starts to wind down the season. Im off up to Glasgow for a few days, and hopefully I'll get a chance to nip up the road to Gleneagles and catch up with a few mates.

Slainte.

A Few Good Wines

Tonight got off to a bad start. With a relay of six already sitting on the books, before we had even opened the doors at seven we had picked up another resit for two, the ceiling started dripping water onto table twelve and then we pick up another table of two, who didnt like their booking in the Brasserie. Ten resits was set to be a new record for us, and one that we would rather not set. Resits have the potential to really screw up our evening, if the first tables are late then the likelihood of us getting the table back in time to turn it around for a 9:00pm resit are pissed out the window. But we get our heads down and make the best of a bad situation. Service starts and the flow soon picks up. Ive got a pre-order in for a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1990, which is a great start to the evening. I have a soft spot for Mouton, more so than any other claret. I must have tried about seven or eight different vintages of Mouton and I can honestly say I havent had a poor one yet, even in marginal vintages it still shines. Of the first growths, the ninety Mouton has probably been the slowest to blossom, but its starting to really open out now, and with another decade or two ahead of it, by good this wine is going to be good.

The label image was one of Francis Bacon's last pieces of work before his death in 1992.

The wine has a brooding spicy note to the aromas of sweet black fruit with jammy plums and xmas spices in there too. Each sniff brings different smells and characters - oaky spicy notes mingle with the fruit and suggest a full flavoured, rich wine. On the palate it is deceivingly soft and feminine with fine tannins supporting rich black fruit flavours, with oaky toasted characters weaving through the flavours. If possible I would say this tastes expensive. It would be interesting to see if I could distinguish it from a cheaper Pauillac tasted blind. An exercise perhaps for when I win the lottery!! I was pleasantly surprised when I opened a bottle of 1995 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux-St-Jacques 1er Cru by Denis Mortet and found similarities in the nose.

Just over a hectare in size, the Lavaux St Jacques vineyard is a premier cru vineyard just next to the Clos St Jacques. Using old vines and a meticulous vineyard management which includes ruthless de-stemming, debudding and pruning to reduce the yields down to the bare minimum. The fields are all deep ploughed in order to force the vines to dig deep to find nourishment. The end result from this is a very small quantity of super premium fruit, rich concentrated flavours with intensity. This is reduced even further with a severe triage in the vineyard then a further triage at the winery. Only the very best and ripest fruit is used. It is de-stemmed before vinification in concrete cuves of various sizes. With the pigeage being done as many as four times a day at the peak of the cuvaison, that is as much intervention as the wine will recieve. A period of maturation in predominantly new oak, the wines are allowed to undergo malo-lactic fermentation to soften out the acids and then bottles unfiltered and often unfined. That means these are not clear wines, there is often a fine sediment suspended in there, and personally I feel that adds to the character of the wine.

At first the wine presented similarly spicy notes on the nose with plummy fruits in the background and a hint of ripened raspberries. There was a deep aroma of dark chocolate with raw beetroot flavours in there too. Bloody marvelous wine from a dedicated and passionate producer. Tragically he took his own life earlier this year for reasons that are unclear. The legacy of his wines continues.

Wine-list 3.0 ready for beta testing

Finished the first draft of the new wine-list. Initial response from Paco and Greg is very good. Some small adjustments to make, underlining headers to distinguish them from the main body of the list, tweaking some of the empty spaces by adding some graphics - label images etc. But over all the response is good. Im very happy with it, although I know there will be a couple of weeks of proof-reading - checking bottles against the description to make sure everything matches up. All being well, and subject to the approval of the MD we go live at the beginning of September.

Now to get working on version 3.1.

Mmm the force is strong in him.

Whilst out at a beer tasting on Monday night, I got a text from young Daniel, my apprentice/commis/bitch, telling me that he'd just sold two bottles of Petrus 1997 in La Brasserie. Obviously he was rather excited about this, and quite rightly too. It was a good sale, and he got a chance to perform for himself the rituals of service, not to mention he got the opportunity to taste it. Good effort young jedi, I can see you are learning what I teach you!!

Helping Out

Working in a hotel, it is inevitable that you will recieve many calls for help from other departments. They need help covering someone who just phoned in sick, they're getting hammered with walk-ins, there's just been a huge delivery, etc etc. I always try to help if I am able, and usually end up helping even if Im not. After all the more you help others, the more likely they are to help you when you need it. Thats the situation I found myself in this morning.

Henning, the Brasserie manager, asked if there was anybody free to help out for a short while with breakfast. Those words strike fear into the hearts of the bravest of men and women. Breakfast is the combat zone - full scale conflict, its never pretty, but less so on a Sunday morning, staring down the back of a full house on Saturday. There is just something about mornings that makes people cranky and irritable. Im speaking from experience here, because I hate mornings, Im a night owl kind of person. Needless to say my two co-workers this morning didnt volunteer, so I felt obliged to help. Now I really hate helping out in an environment where I know nothing, and the brasserie falls fair and square right into that category. I dont know table plans, layouts, where the mis-en-place is, the menu, anything. I dont work in there so why would I? So I volunteered to clear tables - thats almost always a safe bet, and its fairly straightforward. Besides that also the one crucial job on a sunday morning scrimmage - clearing tables - because there are always loads of relays.

So armed with my squirt bottle of cleaner and a couple of cloths, I set about polishing the empty tables so they can be relayed. Then I start clearing the dirty tables that people have left. I've had some bad experiences doing that, where I've accidently cleared someones table while they have been up at the buffet. That didnt go down too well!!! And all the while Im doing this I start recalling some of the nightmares that I experienced at Gleneagles working the breakfast shift until I refused to do it anymore. For the six months that I stayed in staff accomodation up at the Glen, the sommeliers were regularly rostered on for Sunday breakfast. Now that truly was a combat zone. Breakfast was served then from 7am until 10:30am. Guess what time 70% of residents chose to come down for breakfast. 10am. The first three hours were dead, the odd guest who happens to be an early riser, or have a longe return home ahead of them, then come 10am BANG - you get slaughtered. The queue ran from the restaurant doors all the way up the long corridor until it got to the bar, then it snaked round the corner and got tangled up with reception. People start off grumpy, then they get frustrated then anger sets in, then they get really stroppy and start mouthing off. We used to have a couple of guys run up and down the corridor fetching them muffins, juice and tea or coffee to try and ease the pain a bit (for them and us!!). Then the carnage begins as they get seated and set about demolishing the buffet. The buffet was staffed by six people (I always insisted on working the hot buffet) and three runners who just constantly replenish the trays. Those poor buggers run miles each and every morning backwards and forwards from the kitchen. Then as soon as it all started, its all over. Its 11:30 and youve got one hour to completely reset the restaurant for lunch. That is why I hate sundays, or more specifically working on a sunday. Luckily the Arkle is closed on sundays so I dont have to suffer the pain. But today has brought back some unpleasant memories, and thankfully it is only once in a blue moon.

Quality Control

Last night we had a VIP dinner upstairs in one of the function rooms. The group finance director was dining with what seemed to be all the main accountants within Grosvenor. The host is a very powerful man, after all he effectively controls the Duke's money. Needless to say everyone was stressing about the dinner, from the MD down to the M&PD boys and girls who were serving it. I got dragged into the pre-event panic and ended up performing a spot of quality control. I had to open and check every bottle of wine that was due to be served that evening.

Now normally I like this part of the job, after all I get to taste the wine. But yesterday I had the headache from hell. Nurofen was powerless against it, even the old faithful standby of a piece of dark chocolate 70% cocao mass, didnt get through. So when you feel like that, its a bit more of a challenge to motivate yourself to taste twenty bottles of wine. I also had the challenge that almost immediately afterwards I was intending to drive home. Im always cautious about this. Im a responsable person, and if Im driving I dont drink. On an evening service I wont taste anything after 10pm, which usually gives me two hours until I go home. More than enough time to remove any alcohol from my system. After all I probably consume less than 10ml of wine in an evening, which in real terms is less alcohol than you would absorb into your bloodstream after using mouthwash.

So what were the wines - the white was a very nice Arneis from Ascheri, the "Christina" which is named in honour of the winemakers mother. Coming from the Langhe hills of Piedmont it has crisp green apple aromas on the nose, with a hint of pear and I think it is possibly thyme - mediterranean herb. One the palate it is very fresh with a good crisp acidity, medium light body, with the same green apple flavours but with a finish that reminds me of quince paste.

We dragged out one of the big boys for the red - a Chambertin grand cru - "Clos de Beze" from Drouhin-Laroze. An intensely flavoured pinot, with dark red fruit flavours - morello cherry, blackberry, with a gamey surrounding aroma and earthy notes. This one had a really intense flavour on the palate, but the layers dissolved away gently revealing more, over all a very complex wine. Initially the cherrys and blackberries were quite strong, then redcurrents and raspberries, then it became more meaty, like a well aged fillet, succulent and tender. I thought I got a smokey edge on the palate, but it might have been a slight fault, as it only came up on two of the ten bottles. Surprisingly there wasnt much bottle variation, as they were 99's they've only really had about four or five years in bottle, so thats about right. The good news was, no corked bottles, all fit for serving. So I squiggle my initials in the top left hand corner of each label, and we're all ready to rock and roll. Of I trot, as confidant as I can be that all is well with the wines.

PS - the red wine was very well recieved, and for another day Im in the good books.

Holidays for most - Yay, but not for me - boo!!!

The Arkle is now closed for a week so that the chefs and all can get some holiday time in. But someone has to stay and keep an eye on things in the Library, so Im still working (boo!!!). But it should give me a bit of a chance to do some more work on Wine-list 3.0, which is about a third of the way through. Hopefully I ought to get some time to do a bit of training with young Danny as well. And I know that Im probably going to spend more than a few hours down in the cellar helping Mike to get it sorted out. So that week is going to disappear in no time, and then its only a week left till I go on holiday (yay!!!!!!)

Nasal Pollution

Tonight Ive had my sense of smell assaulted by people (women) wearing way too much perfume. Now I love the smell of most perfumes, and its something that I find very erotic. Certain perfumes really light my fire, and two of the offending aromas tonight fall into that bracket. But its a real turn-off when the person is wearing so much perfume that the alcohol is burning the membranes of your nose, and in one case tonight my eyes actually started watering due to the alcohol fumes. She must have bathed in the damn stuff!!! Less is more people, please!!!

Why is this a problem you might think, apart from the prospect of horny waiters running around the restaurant. Well for me my sense of smell is an important tool in my role. I need to be able to assess the state of a wine by its smell and if my nasal passages are overwhelmed by the smell is Issay Miyake, or Chanel then the subtle aromas of a 1985 Corton Bressandes are just lost. So please, for my sake, go easy on the perfume.

On the subject of smells, Ive been doing some training with young Daniel this week using the Nez du Vin kit. I pull out ten random aroma bottles and we both nose them and try to deduce the scents. The little swine has been better at it than me, with a higher success rate. But its quite an interesting exercise. Its amazing how certain scents trigger memories, but you cant quite place where you recognise the aroma from. We had one particular scent which I knew I recognised, but couldnt quite place it. For some reason I associated it as a sweet flavour, which is strange because you cannot actually smell sweet. I was also aware that I didnt particularly like the object that it reminded me of. Not really sure how I knew that but I did. Then it dawned on me - my little girl had been given a roll of parma violets recently and that was the aroma that I recognised. Sure enough when we checked the crib sheet, the aroma in question was violets. Funny the tricks that you mind plays on you.

Wine Blog Wednesday 24 - Loire Whites

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear Wine Blog Wednesday, Happy Birthday to youououououou!!!!

Two years old, and growing. This is my fourth entry into the gathering that is WBW. This anniversary theme is Loire Valley whites, chosen by Alder at Vinography.

This is a bit easier to choose than the last two. Ive gone for a classic Loire white, that used to be immensely popular, but then became kind of naff. Back in the day, when I first really got "into" wine one of the first food and wine matches that I learnt about was seafood and Muscadet. More specifically mussels and muscadet. I quite liked the muscadet but wild horses wouldnt get me to choke down another moule (or for that matter oyster). But Muscadet suffered from a bad rep in the early nineties as demand for it encouraged lower quality wines to flood into the UK market. It also suffered under the onslaught of New Zealand savvy's and other wines from the new world.

About two years ago, I revisited the wine, when Geoffroy the wine rep from a small french company turned up here with a bag full of samples. There were some great wines there, including a Cour Cheverny which is made from the Romorantin grape which was quite unusual, but the one that stood out for me was the Domaine R de la Grange Muscadet "Vielle Vignes". With an average age of 60 years the vines produce less fruit but more flavoursome and concentrated berries. Crisp, clean, and with the autolytic character that comes from its resting "sur lies" . Served cold this wine is a perfect summer quaffer.

Appearance: Pale straw colour, with light watery rim.

Nose: Clean pronounced aromas of Mr Kiplings apple pies - pastry yeastiness and green apple aromas, with undertones of citrus.

Palate: Crisp acidity and dryness. Appley flavours masked with pastry/yeasty taste following into a ruby grapefruit kind of flavour. Mouthwateringly acidic, with no sweetness at all on the palate. Medium short length with clean finish.

Check out Remy's website (in French) for more information.
http://www.domaine-r-delagrange.com

Hill of Grace

One of our favourite customers was in last night, after a break of nearly three months. They're a lovely couple who dine out and about in some of the best restaurants in the UK. They know what they like and they are quite happy to spend to get it. Add that to the fact they are really pleasant to chat to, and they dont demand our attention and you have as close to the perfect customer as you can get. I like it when they come, because they have great taste in wine, but they are also kind of adventurous and often allow me to chose the red for them. This means I can get to try out a new wine on them, or go for an old classic, but every once in a while, I let Mr choose the wine. At the back of my mind is the fear that one day I will overstep the mark and choose a wine that is not right or worse too expensive. So often I err on the side of caution, so I can relax a bit when they choose both wines themselves as the pressure is off a bit.

So tonight they choose the gastonomic menu, Mr looks really chuffed with himself as he closes the wine-list and tells me his choice. A bottle of Jean-Noel Gagnard Chassagne Montrachet les Masures 2002 and...................
a bottle of 1999 Henschke Hill of Grace. The mack daddy of Aussie shiraz. Forget grange, Hill of Grace is the pinnacle of deep brooding shiraz. Produced from fruit grown on 140 year old vines in the heart of the Eden Valley, this is a big and bold as it gets.

On the nose it gave off very intense aromas of black plums, blackberries, with hints of prune and a blend of mint, anise, cinnamon and earthy spices. There was also an aroma that put me in mind of a rib of beef roasted with an english mustar rub. Absolutely amazing nose that just gave me something different everytime I went back to it. After half an hour in the glass the aromas melted into each other and the meaty/minty thing was still quite dominant, but with strong flavours of black jammy fruits. I also thought I could get a scent of good quality dark chocolate - kind of like a bar of Lindt 70% cocao. This was the first time I had tried the 99 Hill of Grace and it makes the third vintage that Ive tried. The first was a bottle of 1990 that one of the sommeliers at Amaryllis had opened by mistake, confusing it for the Mt Edelstone. Some lucky sod got to drink a bottle of Hill of Grace but paid for Mt Edelstone. I dont remember much about that one, except thinking that it was incredibly complex for a new world wine.
The next vintage was the 1996 which we poured at the second gourmet evening that I organised here. Oh my god what an amazing wine. Intense jammy fruit, menthol and eucalyptus with spicy undertones, exceptionally smooth on the palate with a crescendo finish that just lasted and lasted. If I was compiling my list of top ten wines, then the Hill of Grace would sit somewhere in the top five.

The power of the internet

Over the last two (?) weeks Ive watched a story grow much like one of those snowballs you see on cartoons that gets lobbed at the top of a mountain. Slowly it rolls downwards getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it wipes out a town. Heres a run down of what happened.

In February of this year Cam Wheeler of Appelation Australia posted a piece on his blog about the wines of Graeme Miller Wines based in the Yarra Valley (http://www.camwheeler.com/wine/2006/exhibition-of-victorian-winemakers-2006-graeme-miller-wines/). Now the tone of the piece is very friendly and positive, but one of the wines is noted to be exceptionally faulty, and hence rates a score of 50/100. For those unfamiliar with the Parker scoring system*, fifty is about as low as you can get. Basically you get 50 points just for being a liquid in a bottle. Cam noted that he hoped this wasnt representative of the wines, rather than a fault in the bottle. However the winemaker at the show stood behind the bottle and didnt offer a further sample to check. So Cam confered with others whom had attended the tasting and their notes concured. So he went ahead and posted his notes online.

Cut forward three months and he gets an email purporting to be from Graeme Miller threatening him with legal action unless he removed his post from the internet. Not very wise council there then. Their continued attempts to bully and threaten Cam have meant that the story has now grown significantly bigger, much like that snowball, and has crossed the series of tubes we know and love as the Internet. I think it was William Randall Hearst that said "all publicity is good publicity" , but this is bad marketing for the winery. And if they continue this route they seem to have chosen they probably wont recover from it, because people wont focus on their wines rather than their response to this situation. I wish Cam all the success in this battle, and support his decision to publish the review. All to often we only see glowing positive reviews, and its equally important to read not so positive reviews, as long as those reviews are objective and truthful.

The whole scenario got me thinking about the dozens of wines a month that we taste here, but that never get a listing. I can honestly say that it is a long time since I have tasted a truly horrible wine. I would like to think that it is because there are fewer and fewer really bad wines on the market, but to be truthfull, I suspect that our suppliers filter some of the poorer wines out, and only supply samples of higher quality wines. When we do our tasting for the brasserie we will often taste about thirty wines at a time. Usually we will arrange them into flights, so that we are tasting all the sauvignons together, all the chards together etc etc. Often this means that we will try maybe five or six of each variety and the two that stick out will then go head to head on cost/presentation and availability. It has happened on a few occasions that the wine we have ultimately chosen to be listed perhaps was the second or even third best wine, but due to pricing considerations or supplier politics, we have rejected the better wine. Its not a comfortable decision, but sometimes it needs to be made.

So I guess Im lucky that I havent really come across a really bad wine, and I'll tell you what. I hope to goodness it stays that way.

(*The 100 point scale was introduced by Robert Parker Jnr the american lawyer turned wine critic in 1978 when he introduced his newsletter "The Wine Advocate". It was consequently adopted by the Wine Spectator magazine and has since become the de facto standard for many wine reviews. For a fuller explaination of the wine rating systems see Stephen De Longs post on the subject at http://www.delongwine.com/news/2006/05/09/how-we-rate-wines-and-other-things/)

Wines by the glass

Im working on changing our wines by the glass. So far Ive got the champagnes sorted out. Ive got several ideas for the whites and no clues whatsoever about the reds. Its not high on my priority list, its more one of those procrastinating projects that I switch to when I get bored of my higher priority projects (wine-list redesign, bin number re-alignment etc), but its a project that I quite like. The hard part is narrowing down the choice to five or six wines to offer. We want to have a range of styles and represent the New world and Old world to keep all age ranges happy. But its also a case of getting the right prices. If the price is too expensive we will lose business as people avoid it altogether or drink less. But we want to avoid cheap and nasty wines so its a juggling job.

So here are the champagnes we are planning to offer by the glass.

R de Ruinart Brut NV - our house pour, this pinot dominated wine has a rich elegance and creamyness that all our regulars just love.

R de Ruinart Brut Rose - orangey- rose petal pink with fruity nose and red berry flavours.

Aubry Brut NV - fantastic grower champagne from Jouy-les-Reims. The twins used to sell all their grapes to Veuve Clicquot, but now hold back enough to make their own fabulous wines. Also pinot dominated, there is a greater proportion of Meunier in this blend giving a kind of rye bread character to the wine. If youve never experienced a grower champagne then this is one of the best that you can start with.

de Venoge brut Millesime 1996 - small house based in Epernay, owned by Bruno Paillard. This kind of reminds me of fresh pain-au-chocolate you get in the patisseries in French villages first thing in the morning. That brioche style pastry with hits of good quality dark chocolate - vanilla, summer spices. One of the best vintage champagnes Ive had without costing an arm and a kidney.

Pommery Summertime Blanc de Blancs NV - part of Pommery's excellent seasonal range, this pure chardonnay has crisp bracing acidity, with a refreshing summertime lightness and clean pronounced flavours of citrus with fresh almond undernotes.

I will post the whites next week, once I have finalised my choice.

Weve got a new cellar monkey

Phil the cellar master is leaving after two turbulent years in charge of the cellar and stores. He's put up with some real challenges in the form of nightmare stocktakes, staffing issues from hell, lack of support from everybody and its given him high blood pressure and stress. Im amazed he hasnt had a coronary and carked it in the cellar. Im going to miss Phil, we always got on well, and much as I hated coming in on a sunday morning to do the stocktakes, it was a bit of a laugh doing them with him. So now we've got a new cellar monkey - Mike the bookings co-ordinator has volunteered to be the next sacrifical lamb to the slaughter. He's got three days next week to learn the ropes from Phil before hes on his own. Good luck!!!!

Its a vineyard blend

I was at a wine tasting this afternoon with Jon Campbell from DeFine food and Wine, at his very nice shop in Sandiway. We were tasting a range of wines that had been sent in for the Cheshire Smoke house, and I had gatecrashed the event (invited). In all I must have tasted about fifteen wines this afternoon, and there were quite a few that struck a cord and I think that I will end up listing four or more of them. But there were a few wines that I just thought "What the *£%* is that???" The one that springs to mind was a Chenin Blanc/Grenache/Chardonnay blend. What a bizarre combination to string together. Dont get me wrong, I love the kind of wines where a winemaker has gone out on a limb to blend together something different and create something great, but I just dont get this one. What does each element bring to the wine - Chenin blanc - crisp acidity, green apple flavours - Chardonnay - body and depth and again green citrussy apple flavours - Grenache Blanc - oilyness, aromatic components, body. Altogether I dont think this wine worked very well. Perhaps without the Chenin it might have worked as Chardonnay dominant with a small percentage of Grenache - similar to Qupe's Bien Nacido vineyard white which is a blend of chardonnay and viognier. Or the Chenin and the Grenache in much smaller quantities might have worked - after all there was a fantastic Chenin/Viognier blend there, and the Saxenburg Guinea fowl white is a Chenin/Viognier blend as well.

Customers like to identify with what is in a wine, and too many varieties is an off-putting factor. No-one wants to remember the 13 varieties that are permitted for use in a Chateauneuf*. The single biggest advantage that the New World has over the Old world is the use of varietal labelling. Customers ar familiar with the words Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Cabernet, Shiraz etc. They know what they are going to get. The most successful wines on supermarket shelves are single varietal wines. They have become so familiar that they can almost be considered as brands. So I will continue to seek out new and interesting wines, but I doubt that they will have too many varieties.

* for those that might be interested here are the 13 permitted varieties - Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvedre, Picpoul, Terret Noir, Counoise, Muscardin, Picardin, Vaccarese, Clairette, Roussane, and Bourboulenc

Wine-list 3.0

The wine-list is a tool, a means of communicating the wines that we have available for sale in the restaurant. As we have nearly 600 bins on the list at the moment, it is quite an important tool, because I have no chance of remembering all those wines, and if I could it would take me half the night to recall them all for you. A wine-list says a lot about an establishment, a clean well presented wine-list that is up to date, accurate and well written shows that you have some pride in your product. It is likely that if you have gone to some effort to present a great wine-list then you are likely to be knowledgable about the wines on offer and are passionate enough about them to look after them in the appropriate manner. However if your list is a mess, stylistically and literally, its out-of date, inaccurate and full of spelling mistakes then the opposite would hold true.

I would like to think that our list falls into the previous category. At fifty pages long, it is quite a challenge keeping it clean, up to date and informative. We are just in the process of evolving the list to the next stage by making it more dynamic and introducing an element of seasonal flexability into the list. Our first iteration was to move to an easier to read format, modelled on the Pied-a terre format that is also used in Gordon Ramsays restaurants. List 2.0 was to introduce colour into the list when we purchased a new colour laser printer. Now I am working on List 3.0.

When trying to plan how this was going to look, I gathered together a collection of wine-lists from some of the best restaurants in the world. El Bulli, Gordon Ramsay, Le Manior, Veritas NYC, the Herbfarm in Washington State, Alain Ducasse's many restaurants and many others. A team of Paco (Restaurant manager), Ross (GM), John (ex F&B Manager), and Greg (Head Waiter) discussed what elements of different lists we liked and why we liked them. From that we kind of established a template to work from. I liked the informal style of the Herbfarms, with nuggets of information about various wines and winemakers. We all liked the design aesthetics of Alain Ducasse at Essex House, with its clean lines and simple layout. We liked the little graphic logos scattered about El Bullis list as page headers. The next stage is to look at the paper we print the lists on. Currently we are using Conqueror Oyster 120gsm to print on. I looked at some really different papers from Arjo, with speckles, flecks of metal, degrees of transparency, cotton papers, banknote grade papers (more expensive than the money itself!!!) and loads of funky colours. The price is the crucial element here. It looks like it will be too expensive to use them for the entire list, but Im hoping to be able to use them for certain seasonal pages.

Now that have decided these things, comes the really hard part. Sitting down and typing it all out. Sounds easy, but believe me its not. After and hour of solid typing your eyeballs start to dry out, you start getting hypnotised by the movement of the curser, and your wrists start to swell up. The worst thing is that if you are lucky you have probably only done about four or five pages. There are currently fifty pages in the wine-list. Pass the icepacks!!!

So Ive been given a deadline. By the 1st September List 3.0 must be ready. Best get working then.

More Claret than a cockney gangster movie

Im having a cracking week on the old claret sales, I have to keep pinching myself to make sure Im not dreaming. The only problem is that Im starting to run out of bottles left right and centre. So far this week, Ive deleted over twenty bins, and with a full house tomorrow, Ive got a feeling that Im looking at the wrong side of another ten tomorrow. By the end of the week I reckon that I will have exhausted nearly forty bins. But the good news is that I means I will get to go shopping!!!! This also means we will be able to move over to our new model of purchasing, by buying small parcels of mature stock from Broking lists, and making the list more dynamic. I love doing this.

Tonight we've sold a bottle of 1917 Climens. The wine was a light golden brown colour when the bottle was opened (miraculously the cork came out intact!!) but I'd swear it actually got darker as I decanted it. With hindsight Im not too sure that was the wisest of moves, but there was quite a lot of sediment in the bottle. On the nose it was quite stunning - candied orange peels and honeyed fruit flavour. I have to say that Im not a fan of dessert wines - I find them too sweet, and they just make me cringe when I taste them. This one was no exception, but it had an amazing depth of flavour and the taste remained on my palate for ages. The guy who bought the bottle is having dinner upstairs in the function suites tomorrow, and they are chosing some clarets for a tasting over dinner. So I offered them an impromptu cellar tour. Im glad I did, because it gave me a chance to find out what kinds of wines they want to look at tomorrow, and then it gave me the opportunity to help steer their selection. It seems that they are keen to try some great wines, and theres a small possibility that the 95 Double magnum of Petrus might be one of them.

In the mean time, Ive got all my digits crossed!!

Breaking records

Wow, what a night. We're in the middle of the Open golf tournament at Hoylake, and as you might guess the hotel is quite busy. Now golf seems to attract a whole different set of followers than other sports. For starters they are all quite affluent, but not the showy kind of affluent that is usually bravado. These people are wearing understated wealth, expensive but discreet. They know whats good, they know it will cost them, and they are happy to pay. This means we really need to have our a-game on tonight and over the remainder of the week.

I was caught kind of unawares by an unassuming table of two, casually dressed and lounging in the armchairs in the Library. Paco told me they wanted to speak to me before they ordered their meals. Usually that means they want to ask some questions about the menu matching that we offer in the gourmand menu. So a brief look at the gourmand to refresh my memory (aint what it used to be - old age creeping up on me!!) and I approach the table. The guys greet me, and the "host" launches into what he's looking for. He holds no punches either "Im toying with the idea of the La Tache or a first growth". My mind thinks bingo, and I keep a poker face going as I start thinking through my options - Mouton 90 or 96, Latour 1950 (almost knackered), Lafite 1970, HautBrion 85 or 96, or Margaux 49 or 83. Then you could start looking at Cheval Blanc 49 or 96, then theres Pomerol - Petrus 81, 97 or 98 (the latter two really a bit young), then theres the big yin - 1986 Le Pin. As I vocalise my thoughts and dismiss the younger vintages and the Latour I casually throw the Le Pin in almost making a joke about needing a mortgage for it. Bugger me if he doesnt go and decide on it after all. I nearly fell over.

(I know the label image is the wrong vintage but I could find the right one)

My confidence wavers a bit, this bottle is on the list at £2200. Im kind of reluctant to endorse it or encourage him to take it, because if its knackered or he doesnt like it, Ive got a major problem on my hands. I waffle the facts I know about the wine, small production, owned by the Thienpoint family who also own Vieux Chateau Certan, once scored 100 points from Robert Parker and consequently went through the roof. As I fetch the bottle from the cellar I pop into my office and sneak a peak at Michael Broadbent to see what he thought of the wine. He rates it quite highly, higher than most of the 1st growths of the vintage, Mouton excepting. So armed with a few more titbits of conversation I present the wine. As I present it, I regale my customers with my newly found information and mentally cross everything I can that the wine isnt corked.

As I cut down the foil and gently remove it, my heartbeat starts to increase. Paranoia sets in, and I start working through horror scenes in my mind. The damn cork snaps, and I end up fishing out my butlers thief to fetch the last remaining third of the cork. It comes out without further trauma. I eagerly pour a small measure into a glass. So far so good, there is a distinct absence of TCA. As I swirl it round in the glass, the fruit flavours jump forward and assualt my nasal passages. The wine smells outstanding. For a twenty year old wine, there is loads of fruit evident on the nose. There is none of the greenness that I found the last time I served a Le Pin up at Gleneagles. But then this bottle has at least another 12 years of bottle age on that one.

Cursing the sore throat that has been building up all day, I cant really taste much, which is a shame, who knows when I will next get the chance to taste this wine again. I decant it carefully and then we are good to go. After finishing their pre-dinner drinks the gentlemen move through to the restaurant, and its showtime. As the guest swirls the wine in his glass his nasal passages are assualted with flavour and a huge grin breaks out on his face. Relief washes over me and a smile breaks out on my face. A new personal best for the most expensive single bottle of wine Ive sold, and also the most expensive bottle Ive sold here at the Grosvenor.

I went on to have a cracking night, selling some great old clarets and loads of really good (and expensive) Armagnacs and whiskies. Good sales snowball into other good sales, and Im on fire tonight. Bring on tomorrow!!

Beer Tasting

We had a beer tasting today to try and choose some new beers for the library and brasserie. The fella that came and showed us a load of beers, is an importer of specialist beers, but he also runs a bar in the outskirts of Manchester that sells all this stuff. So he really knows his stuff, and I have to say that the beers he brought along for us to try were pretty good beers. Most of them were beers that I had never heard of, they generally have a low profile in the UK, which is good for what we are looking for. Next week I will post a few tasting notes of some of the beers that we are going to list, but first we need to decide which ones we are choosing.

Le Nez du Vin

I got my Nez du Vin kit the other day, but I havent really had a chance to play with it yet. We splashed out a lot of money on the full 54 scent kit, and as a bonus we got the New Oak kit included in the price. Wahey!!

The Nez du Vin is a funky big red binder full of little bottles of aromas. It has 54 reference samples of various aromas associated with wine. The idea is that you can train your nose to recognise aromas, and hence begin to build up the knowledge and experience to identify wines in blind tastings. There are several different versions of the kit, including wine faults, which we got last year, red wines, white wines, bordeaux wines, and new to the range is the Nez du Cafe and Nez du Cigare with the various aromas that you find in coffee and cigars respectively.

So now that we have the kit, the idea is to start doing some nosing exercises with Danny to build up both our proficiency in nosing. Should be fun.

More information can be found at www.lenez.com.

Taittinger Champagne

Today we had a lunch in the Arkle for Champagne Taittinger and some of their clients in the Northwest. Justin Llewellyn from Taittinger was there as was Oliver Haussels from Continental and Overseas who represent them in the Greater Manchester region.

As is usually the case for event such as these, the numbers were all over the place. When restauranteurs and hoteliers get invited out, it is often difficult to know for sure if they are going to turn up. Ive lost track of the number of events that Ive been invited to then had to pull out at the last minute because of a work commitment. It's frustrating for me as an attendee to have to pull out, it's more so for the hosts as they inevitably end up paying for all those missing covers. Especially so with the last minute no-shows and cancellations.

Anyway, for the lunch today we started off with the Taittinger Brut NV. A nice lightly sparkling, easy drinking champagne. Predominantly chardonnay followed by Meunier then Pinot Noir this was a crisp fruity wine, with three years of age during the secondary fermentation.

For the starter we went straight to the tete de cuvee, the Comte de Champagne 1995. A blanc de blancs from six grand cru villages - Cramant, Avize, Oger, Le Mesnil, Chouilly and Pierry. Fruity, buttery, nutty, vibrantly perfumed. Of all the prestige cuvees, it is one of my favourites.

For the main course we poured the 1998 Vintage. Predominantly chardonnay, this has a much fruitier character than the Comte, due to the inclusion of the Pinots Noir and Meunier. I have to say I liked this wine a lot. When I was checking the bottles there was a lot of bottle variation, with one bottle being corked (good thing I checked them!!) and one bottle was borderline. Justin told the assembled diners that he felt it was a shame this wine was often overlooked as people jumped from the brut tradition to the Comte. I have to agree, if you miss this, then you really are missing out on a superb champagne.

For dessert we poured the Rose, which was quite surprising in a number of ways. First of all, it is in a clear bottle, which is quite unusual for any champagne much less a rose. It has quite a dark colour, which comes from its process of blending red wine from Bouzy with the vins clair. Apparently the percentage is 13% red wine, which enables Taittinger to maintain a consistent colour. Ultimately for the Grande Marques consistency is their aim.

So all in all, some really quite nice champagnes, and a fantastic meal was enjoyed by all.

Wine and Spirit Magazines Sommelier Challenge

I got an email yesterday from the editor at Wine & Spirit (formerly Wine International) informing me that I had been selected for the first round of the Sommelier Challenge. For those unfamiliar with the challenge, each month four sommeliers from around the world are send a recipe from a famous chef. Their challenge is to select a wine that they feels complements the dish. Then the judges gather at a restaurant in London, to taste the wines in conjunction with the meal. Scores are awarded for your selection and a league table is compiled. At the end of the challenge the four top scoring sommeliers enter the final round to compete for the grand prize. Its a great competition because you get an opportunity to pit your experience and knowledge against some great sommeliers from across the globe. Its also a great learning tool, because you get to see a range of recommendations and reasons for them, often coming up with some new ideas, and directions to pair dishes with.

So I got my recipe, which was a roasted loin of rabbit, with prune, belly and langoustines, from Jun Tanaka of Pearl restaurant. Its an interesting recipe and it is similar to a dish that Chef produces here. So my suggestion for the wine is a New Zealand Pinot Noir from Mount Edward, based in Gibbston, Central Otago. The current vintage is 2003, but we are still pouring the 2001. Its a big, fairly full bodied red, unusual for a pinot. On the nose, it has dense black fruity flavours with hints of spice and a touch of white pepper. Being quite young it retains its youthful acidity which will help break down the flavours of the langoustine, and its tannic backbone with cut through the fattyness of the rabbit belly and streaky bacon the loin is wrapped in.

So the judges are tasting the wines against the dish next friday, Im not sure when it is being published, but I would imagine that it will be fairly soon. Im quite looking forward to reading it and seeing what else is recommended. This will be the third time that Ive done the challenge, lets hope I get a better score than last time, and hence show some progression.

Sabreur

Well Ive completed my sabrage and been invested into the Confrere du Sabre d'Or as a Sabreur. Here you can see that I had a small audience, what you dont see is that I made an arse of the first attempt. Despite having done it many many times before, whenever I have an audience I always seem to not quite apply enough pressure on the first shot. Call it my practice swing if you will.

Anyway the next step is to perform a sabrage in front of the Ambassador Julian White to become a Chevalier. Hopefully I will get an opportunity to do that quite soon.

The mark of grazza

Hopefully tomorrow I will enter into the Confrere du Sabre d'Or, that is the organisation that promoted the opening of Champagne with a sword. Clare Logue from the Confrere is coming down to the hotel to fill me in on the procedures and all being well, I'll perform my sabrage and be invested into the Confrere as a Sabreur, the first rung on the ladder.

Hopefully I'll be able to get a picture of the event and post it online tomorrow.

Whisky tasting

Apologies in advance if some of this doesnt make sense, but Ive just been doing a whisky tasting with Eddie from LVMH. Im not used to drinking spirits, and as a few of the whiskies we tasted were cask strength, its fair to say I'm a bit half-cut.

Now I dont like whisky, but a bit part of my role is to know about these products, and to be able to sell them, I have to know them. So I was prepared to sacrifice myself for the furtherment of my education. Now after many years of doing this, Ive kind of developed a method to tasting spirits, that allows me to get the flavour, without to much alcohol burn, and that usually involves me allowing the minutest amount of spirit into my mouth. But today I got a pleasant surprise, I actually found that I enjoyed some of the whiskies, and I even found two that I could drink (alas their price means that I wont be able to!!). It got me thinking about how my palate is maturing, and how a product that even five years ago I couldnt possibly drink, now starts to appeal to me. The one whisky that really caught my attention was the Glenmorangie 30year old. Its distinctive packaging - a solid brown box with leather straps - together with the undestated label give it the air of something a bit different. The whisky itself has a slightly rose tint to it, and a really vibrant nose of dried fruits, spices and soft nutty - kind of walnut whip like aroma. On the palate it is amazingly smooth, with an opening flavour similar to biting into a fresh peachskin, with more typical fruit cake flavours and a dundee marmalade character underneath. The Oloroso cask aging lends a sultana, baked spiced apple sort of flavour. So smooth and rich I could still taste it five minutes later. I actually was reluctant to pour the last drop out in order to try the next bottle.

Wine Blog Wednesday 23 - BBQ wines

We Brits dont really have a tradition of Barbeque, not like the Aussie's who will quite literally chuck anything on a bbq, the only rule being you have one hand on the barbie, the other on a tinnie. In America, barbeque is a whole cuisine unto itself. Wander down the food aisle of Waterstones or Borders bookshop and there are whole shelves devoted to books on BBQ. Cajun style, tex mex style, louisiana slow cooking style etc etc. In South Africa the "Briai" (not sure about the spelling there) is a male bonding ritual, with the boerwoers sausage, obligitory beers and other accoutrements. Here in blighty, we BBQ quite badly. Our idea of a good barbeque is one where you dont get food poisoning from the burnt to a crisp on the outside sausages, that somehow manage to still be frozen/raw in the middle. So Im going to take a look at a few wines that might work well in a garden party style of event. Once again bending the "rules" of the event.

White wine:
For summer glugging, I absolutely love a Moscato d'Asti. Light fruity white wine, from Italy. One of my favourites is the Prunotto Moscato d'Asti which is a DOCG. This is a light fruity white, only about 9% alcohol, so you can swig a few bottles and still walk. For sitting in the summer sun, with a bowl of strawberries and melon you cant beat it. Lightly sparkling, with a fruity sweetness - that kind of unmistakable grapey flavour that only moscato seems to have.


Red Wine:
Bonny Doon Vineyards, Clos de Gilroy Grenache. I first tried this wine last year when we did a Rhone Rangers Dinner in the Arkle. Alex Krause from BDV vineyards came over and presented their wines. We started with the Vin gris de Cigare, before having the Cigare Blanc, then the Clos de Gilroy with the intermediate. Wow, what a cracking red wine, rich purple fruit flavours, a modicum of tannins, enough to cut through red meats and smokey flavours (it works really well with a Duke of Berkshire smoked pork belly that we serve right now.), but not too much that its a heavy red. I'd class this as a medium bodied red, with all the flavour and intensity of a full bodied red. Apparently Randall Grahm is trying to position it as something in the style of a Grenache Nouveau, and seems to be getting closer to this aim, as the 2004 was harvested early enough to have the wine released by the 18th November. With its funky label which at first looks a bit like Oscar Wilde, to the frankly bizarre notes on the rear label, this is a wine that is set to challenge your conceptions and expand your horizons.

So thats my take on wine blog wednesday 23. If Im lucky the weather will hold out to the weekend and I might get the opportunity to try out the wines on Sunday.