Black Stump Verdelho - Chardonnay - Pinot Grigio from Laithwaites

Black Stump contribute several wines wines to Laithwaites' list including a Reserve Shiraz Viognier (reviewed here earlier). To those not familiar with Aussie slang, a black stump is an imaginary marker beyond which civilisation as we know it ceases; beyond the black stump, then, is equivalent to "the back of beyond" or "out in the sticks".

The wine hails from the catch-all area of South Eastern Australia (New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria, and parts of Queensland and South Australia), so there's not much sense of place to be gained here.

Given all this, it's easy to imagine this wine as a throw-it-all-in-and-see sort of thing, but actually it's very focused and there's nothing coarse or uncivilised at all.

On the nose, the Pinot Grigio dominates with mineral, flint and white pepper. The palate is crisp and well-structured with white peach and lime, nicely balanced with a good complex finish. It's hard to tell exactly what the other two varieties are adding but presumably the Chardonnay here rounds out the Pinot Grigio, and the Verdelho adds a touch more richness and a hint of spice.

In any case, it's a well-made wine which has impressed a number of judges - it has three awards:

- Vinalies Internationales Paris 2008, France

- International Wine Challenge 2008, United Kingdom

- Decanter World Wine Awards 2008, United Kingdom

 At £6.99, it's also reasonable value.

Links

Laithwaites - http://www.laithwaites.co.uk/

International Wine Challenge - http://www.internationalwinechallenge.com/

Spinyback by Waimea, 2008, Nelson Pinot Gris‏

Expectations for this latest NZ wine from Cambridge Wine Merchants were reasonably high in the CWB household; I am generally a fan of NZ whites as they often seem to be the closest thing the southern hemisphere has to match Austria; well-structured, aromatic and full-bodied yet crisp, lean and minerally with the kind of restraint that next-door Australia seems never to have heard of.

In general, I am also a fan of Pinot Gris - related to Pinot Noir it is highly versatile, producing rich, fat aromatic yet dry and wines as Pinot Gris in Alsace, but also sharp, crisp, steely, minerally wines as Pinot Grigio in Alto Adige in northern Italy, and elsewhere.

Cambridge Wine Merchants had this on special offer at £6:99 with an in-store tasting, whilst the promotional poster noted it as having been awarded "best single varietal white under £10" by Decanter, so this was a bargain I could not resist.

Tasting stocks had run out by the time I got to the Mill Road branch, but the assistant helpfully explained a bit about the wine - most usefully pointing out the residual sugar on the finish. This being so, I decided to limit myself to just a couple of bottles with the intention of coming back for a case if it was as good as I'd hoped.

The wine hails from Nelson, at the northern tip of South Island next door to the more well-known Marlborough, but separated by a range of mountains; the terroir here is varied with hills, valleys and various mesoclimates. The back label refers "Classic varietal aromas of pear and quince ... notes of lime and spice ... palate lingering and softly textured".

We drank the bottle over the course of three days, firstly with salmon in a creamy sauce, then on a picnic on one of those gloriously hot days we had recently on Castle Mound overlooking the city before finally finishing it off with a starter of mozzarella dressed with olive oil.

For me, it was a really well-made Pinot Gris - a strong, minerally nose that belies the off-dry finish (a bit like hearing Kiera Knightly's voice come out of Angelina Jolie). On the palate, it is ripe, fleshy, with good fruit and nicely-balanced acidity, well-structured and a long finish - I can see why the judges gave it a nod.

Off-dry, however, it needs something really rich and slightly sweet to go with, so for the second bottle, we tried it with a traditional Alsatian tarte flambee (a pizza-like dish, but with sour cream, onions and lardons over a pastry base).

Tarte Flambee recipe - using puff pastry

Pack of puff pastry (allow around 50g per person for a starter)
A little oil
1 medium onion, chopped
Crème fraîche (around 50ml per person for a starter)
Salt and pepper to taste
A few gratings of nutmeg
Bacon (around 1 rasher per person), cut into strips

Roll out the puff pastry and place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.

Make the sauce by frying the onions in the oil, then adding the creme fraiche, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Spread the sauce on top of the pastry, add on the bacon strips.

Cook in a medium oven (180C) for 10-15 minutes

Links

Waimea - http://waimeabrands.com/

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/index.asp

Cambridge's newest wine shop - Cambridge Wine Merchants on Cherry Hinton Road

Just a few steps away from the re-developed cattle market area, Cherry Hinton Road sees the opening of Cambridge's newest wine shop, another in the expanding chain of Cambridge Wine Merchants.

CWM owner, Hal Wilson - who already has branches on Mill Road, King's Parade (directly opposite King's college) and Bridge St, as well as a number further afield - invited me to drop round on the opening night to meet the manager Steve Hovington and see for myself.

The look and feel of this newest branch will be familiar to anyone who has already visited a CWM branch - the trademark eggshell blue colour scheme and dark wood floor give it a tasteful and sophisticated yet unpretentious feel. The same can be said of the wine list and although it is standardised across all outlets, there were a couple of items here not yet available in other branches, including a white from Ribeiro in Spain.

Steve, who had just got back from a series of en primeur tastings in Bordeaux and also is CWM's WSET tutor, explained that what also sets this branch apart is an indoor seating area which will serve drinks on the premises (as soon as the on-licence comes through), making it more than just a place to buy wine to take away. On that very hot evening, the potential and appeal of this was immediately obvious.

Unlike, say, Trumpington which has Noel Young and Waitrose, or the Mill Road area which is well-served for wine merchants, Cherry Hinton has little in the way of "serious" wine outlets, so this newest CWM is a welcome addition for wine-drinkers in the area

The location is the site of a former Wine Rack which was around for many years, but disappeared when parent company First Quench went into administration last year. There was also a relatively short-lived independent called Veritas which disappeared a few years ago. Steve explained that this branch has the advantage of much lower overheads than in central Cambridge, but all of the central support that CWM offers in terms of sourcing wines and marketing them.

Links

Cambridge Wine Merchants - Cherry Hinton Road - http://www.cambridgewine.com/Profile.asp?user=12

Matching Food and Wine Series - Spicy Foods

The first Cambridge Food and Wine Society matching event was a few years ago now - for that event, I took a few "classic" food and wine combinations (Sancerre and goat's cheese, roast beef and Bordeaux) and asked people to see if they thought they were a match - that is to say, both the food and the wine were enhanced by being consumed together.

Wine writers frequently seem to claim that food matching is more an art than a science - what I think they mean by this is that you cannot always predict whether a food and wine will match well together ahead of actually pairing them off. I agree with this to some extent but, whilst serendipity has its part to play in producing unexpected matches, with a bit of practice it's not that difficult to hazard a guess at whether a particular wine is going to match with a food.

I sourced the wines for this event from Cambridge Wine Merchants after Hal Wilson, the owner, kindly offered to help out and spent a very pleasant half hour with his Mill Road branch manager on the morning of the event discussing each course and the type of wine I wanted to match it with.

There are a number of ingredients that are inimical to matching with wine - greasy food in particular does not match well with wine, which is why you have Coke with a Big Mac or beer with a Wiener schnitzel. Spicy foods are something of a challenge too, but not impossible if the spice is used more as a seasoning rather than being allowed to overpower the meal.

The first pairing was relatively straightforward and a staple of wine bars everywhere - a pepper salami with a fruity southern French red and was generally agreed to be a reasonable match, although it turned out a later wine proved to be an even better one.

Next came arabbiata - an Italian pasta sauce made with tomatoes, bacon, garlic and chili. Chianti is the classic Italian food wine, but with a budget of around £10 per bottle, we were looking only at something entry level, and decided to opt for a better-value Barbera from the unfashionable (and therefore cheaper) region of Oltrepo Pavese. Both the wine and the arabbiata were excellent, but the sauce needed just a little more kick to go really well with the full, rich wine.

I can't imagine ever having anything but beer with an Indian curry, but Thai curries are a different matter altogether - with coconut, gingery galangal and lemongrass, they are much more wine friendly and match well with a ripe, oaky New World Chardonnay.

Paprika salmon is a traditional Hungarian dish (typically, freshwater catfish is used as Hungary is landlocked) with a sauce made from sour cream, paprika and tomatoes - it is a hearty, calorie-laden stew for peasant labourers with spice but no heat. Sadly, there were no Hungarian reds available, but we matched it with another southern French red, with plenty of fruit and acidity to cut through the heavy cream sauce. The wine, a Carignan from old vines, was ripe, spicy and full and would actually have made a better match for the salami (with the first wine probably more suited to this dish).

This was followed by two Iberian dishes with local wines - a Spanish chicken and chorizo stew with a Rioja (both delicious, but some felt the wine overpowered the stew) and piri piri chicken with a Portuguese red blend containing a fair amount of the food-friendly but non-traditional Cabernet Sauvignon which stood up well to the robust flavours of chili and vinegar.

We finished with two desserts - baklavas (chopped walnuts and pistachios between sheets of filo pastry flavoured with cinnamon) and an apple cake flavoured with vanilla.

Matching these were an award-winning Pedro Ximenez sherry that was full of fig, raisin and dried mixed fruit flavours and was almost a complete dessert in its own right and a very smooth single malt whisky from Speyside, with the lightness and refreshing acidity to cut through both the cake and the baklavas.

The Wines

Dom. de Cassan Beaumes de Venise 2007, France £10.99

Nostros Chardonnay Gran Reserva 2007, Casablanca Valley, Chile £7.95

Barbera 2008, Cantina di Casteggio, Oltrepo Pavese, Italy £6.99

Mont Rocher Old Vine Carignan 2009 VdP d' Herault, France £7.49

Paternina Reserva Rioja 2004 Banda Roja, Spain £10.99

Esporao Reserva Tinto 2007, Alentejo, Portugal £14.99

Hidalgo Pedro Ximenez Triana, Spain £13.30

Glen Rothes 8yo MacPhails Collection Single Speyside Malt, £25.50

Links

Cambridge Food and Wine Society - http://www.cambridgefoodandwinesociety.org.uk/

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/index.asp

Second Wines - Reserve de la Comtesse

I popped into Cambridge Wine Merchants at the weekend to source some wines for a Cambridge Food and Wine Society event and whilst there, noticed a magnum of Reserve de la Comtesse 1994 on display.

Now, I can't remember how I happen to know this bit of wine trivia, but Reserve de la Comtesse is the second wine of Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande - one of fifteen Deuxièmes Crus (Second Growths) in the original Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. I'm not sure I could name any others, but this essentially means that the wine is not quite good enough to go into a wine costing, possibly, hundreds of pounds per bottle, but is basically from the same area and made with the same skill and care - in the same way that a Skoda shares its underpinnings, chassis, engine and pretty much everything except the final layer of trim with a (much more expensive) Audi.

Whilst mainly associated with Bordeaux, second wines are nothing new, nor are they limited to classed growths; Waitrose, for example, sells a Cotes de Castillon called Seigneurs d'Aiguilhe from for under a tenner as the second wine of Château d'Aiguilhe. For bargain hunters, second wines are great news - you get a good sense of what the main wine is like without anything like the expense, so at this point I popped back home for some quick Internet research which revealed the price was very reasonable and the year was a good albeit not a truly great one.

Second wines also have an advantage for the producer, as they allow, for example, wine from younger vines or in off years to be sold under a different label, thus maintaining the prestige of the first wine.

In general, second wines are said to be slightly faster-maturing than the main wine, but as top Bordeaux may be only just ready to drink at about 10 years, peaking after a few more years, and as magnums age more slowly than single bottles (twice the amount of wine but the same amount of air in the bottle), my main concern was only around how it had been stored for the last 16 years rather than whether was past its best. A quick chat with the branch manager revealed it had been in the shop for a couple of months, but had been stored sensibly and prior to that, had been with a wine wholesaler. He also helpfully added that if there was a fault, I could return it for a refund - which was very reassuring.

My last magnum of "quality" Bordeaux was at Christmas when I opened a Troplong Mondot which an appreciative boss had given me a while back - I was not sure at the time whether I would be able to perceive the difference between that and the more everyday Bordeaux I usually pick up in a French supermarket, but there was definitely something superior about the depth and texture of the wine which was hard to define, but felt perhaps a little like seeing the original of a great painting compared to just a print in an art book.

As to price, this magnum set me back around as much as an entire Laithwaites "mystery case", so it's definitely a "special occasion" wine and all that remains now is to find a suitable occasion.

Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande's website includes a whole section on its second wine and here's what it has to say:

In the Bordeaux region the classified crus have mixed soils, but large enough tracts of land to make very rigorous selections. It is only the quest for excellence during the XVIIIth century that led the owners to elaborate several wines of different quality. Severe selecting is the guarantee of quality of a great wine, but also of a second wine.

Today, the second wines represent between 20 and 50 % of the total production of the Chateau. From the same soil, the second wine benefits from the same technology as the great wine, and also its reputation. They are generally excellent wines, though less robust and long lasting than their elders.

The archives kept at Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande mention the existence of a second wine as early as the XIXth century:

27 April 1890, shipping of four bottles of the vintage 1874 second wine to the Moscow exhibition.

In addition, the accounts book for the year 1874, that details the production of the year confirms that the second wine was rigorously selected.

The second wine of Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, The Réserve de la Comtesse, was created and sold for the first time in 1973.

Links

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/

Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande - http://www.pichon-lalande.com/index-uk.htm

Some light relief at half-term: The Plough at Coton‏

It was half-term recently and my turn to look after the kids. With only a little encouragement from me, my daughter decided she would like to do a bike ride and have a pub lunch somewhere.

As I have mentioned before, the quality of eating establishments in central Cambridge is not generally that great as many have only the tourist trade to consider. Moreover, whilst central Cambridge is an undeniably lovely place with its historic colleges, pedestrianised medieval street layout, the river Cam and the backs, the surrounding countryside is rather less impressive. So it was something of a challenge to think of a scenic route of 10-15 miles, suitable for a young cyclist, going via a decent country pub.

In the end, we started at Castle Mound, the highest point in the city with views of various chapels and rooftops, then wound our way between the colleges and along the backs to Grantchester Meadows and on to Grantchester itself before taking a minor road up to Coton about three miles west of Cambridge where we stopped at The Plough.

The Plough had been on my radar for a while as a gastropub worth visiting, but somehow we had never got round to it - any trips west of Cambridge have generally been to the excellent Three Horseshoes in nearby Madingley.

Set more or less in the centre of Coton, The Plough has that typical gastropub look of a cosy olde worlde exterior contrasting with a smart, modern interior. As that day it happened to be not only not raining, but also rather hot in fact, we decided to sit under an umbrella outside at the back.

I went for the three-course set lunch, whilst my daughter ordered from the children's menu. The food was proper gastropub-style, that is to say traditional pub food, well-made and presented, with perhaps the odd twist here and there, but not overly fancy restaurant food that happens to be served in a pub setting.

My starter of duck and black pudding terrine was served with slices of baguette and some dressed salad leaves and the waiting staff obligingly brought my daughter's fish and chips at the same time so that she did not have to sit and wait for her food.

My main, when it arrived, was a deliciously buttery piece of cod, lightly cooked to perfection and served on roasted peppers with a manchego crust and tapenade - a paste of black olives. At home, I would not be brave enough to try and mix the heavy salty flavours of tapenade with cheese and cod for fear of overwhelming the subtlety of the fish, but this worked really well, especially with the sweetness of the peppers.

My daughter's fish and chips were equally well made, with light crispy batter, succulent fresh fish and proper fat chips perfectly cooked - I can say this with authority having tried more than a few myself, much to her annoyance.

To finish, we had both chosen the same thing - chocolate brownie with ice-cream. Sadly, I was informed, their supplies only ran to a child's portion, so I re-ordered a cheesecake with amaretto, chocolate chips and raspberry topping. It was due to be served with clotted cream ice-cream (the main reason I had ordered it, to be honest) but actually came with a small saucer of double cream. I overcame my mild disappointment at this by pouring the cream over the cheesecake and also trying some of my daughter's ice-cream and brownie sundae which was lovely - the brownie soft and moist, the rich home-made ice-cream flecked with dots of vanilla.

My cheesecake was also delicious - I am not sure I could discern any Amaretto in it and the chocolate chips did not seem to add much to it, but these were minor points.

There is a large garden at the back of the pub with additional seating, some trees and play equipment for children, so my daughter went off to try these out whilst I finished off my beer - a lovely pint of Adnams bitter - before a gentle ride back into Cambridge, again via Grantchester.
 
Having finally visited The Plough, I now don't know why we haven't been there before; we will certainly be back soon.
 
Links
 
The Plough - http://www.theploughcoton.co.uk/
 
Adnams - http://adnams.co.uk/
 
Our approximate route can be found on Multimap directions - Cambridge to Coton via Grantchester: http://www.multimap.com/directions/

Italian tasting at Cambridge Food and Wine Society with Poggio Argentiera

If Justine Keeling-Paglia is to be believed, she is living the dream. The ex-marketing manager, married to a former agronomist, is now half of the husband-and-wife team behind Poggio Argentiera, a winery barely 14 years old in southern Tuscany which produces a range of red, white and dessert wines, mainly from indigenous grape varieties, as well as olive oil.

It sounds idyllic, but back in the real world, Justine explained to me, she had three children tummy upsets and a cellar manager with an injured knee after a car crash whilst husband GianPaolo, whom my neighbour described "intense, but very dishy, my dear" explained as part of his talk to the Cambridge Food and Wine Society, some of the headaches he faces as a wine-maker.

GianPaolo's approach to wine-making is thoroughly Old World, and very Italian; for him, wine is something to have as part of a meal, it should be complex, balanced and relatively low in alcohol with sufficient tannin and acidity to stand up to traditional Italian cuisine.

His attitude to the US as a potential export market is ambivalent to say the least - whilst acknowledging the sales potential, he finds the US approach of "bigger is better" (in relation to fruit and alcohol) and the idea of wine as a stand-alone beverage rather than as an accompaniment to food alien to his Italian principles.

And so to the wines - we started with two blends from the indigenous Ansonica and Vermentino grapes (the former being a relative of the Greek Roditis which I had tried for the first time at the Society's previous Greek tasting). The first wine was crisp and aromatic, the second a step-up with great structure.

Next came something a little unusual, an Ansonica fermented with the skins (a red-wine technique not generally used for whites), left on its lees whilst aging in concrete vats and bottled without filtration, it was full and smooth, but without the heaviness one might expect from something so markedly old-school.

Red wine in Tuscany generally equals Sangiovese, a grape I have historically struggled with - but GianPaolo's talk with his emphasis on wine as an accompaniment to food helped me make sense of it properly.

When matching food and wine, it is important to let one of the pairing dominate - for me, it is usually the wine that plays the lead role, with the food supporting. However, for an Italian, it is all about the food dominating, and suddenly Sangiovese makes sense - with high acidity, firm tannins and the sourness of cherries on the palate, it is not only needs food to go with it, but also plays a lesser, supporting role in the overall pairing; its relative lack of complexity is the very reason why it works as a support to food.

The first red of the evening was a Ciliegiolo (cheel-yeh-JOH-loh), a local variety related to Sangiovese with dark colour, ripe cherry fruit and a hint of spice. The next two reds were Sangiovese blends, the first clean and fresh from fermentation in stainless steel, the second a more rounded affair with added complexity from aging in oak.

The last of the dry reds was a "Super Tuscan" made from mainly French varieties (Alicante aka Grenache, Syrah and Cabernet Franc). Super Tuscan wines are made with international grape varieties not permitted under Italian DOC classification, and therefore can only be labelled with the lowest classification IGT (but not sadly, with a price tag to match). Named Finisterre, this rich full wine with notes of liquorice and chocolate, was not only my favourite of the evening, but also, apparently, the critics' as it has been awarded Tre Bicchiere by Gambero Rosso.

To finish, there was something a little unusual - a red dessert wine made from Alicante grapes left to dry out in the sun before fermentation; the first impression was of intense sweetness and dark forest fruits, but then followed by notes of liquorice, spices and dark chocolate.

To accompany the wines, we had some typical Italian antipasti - of which more shortly.

Links
 
Cambridge Food and Wine Society - http://www.cambridgefoodandwinesociety.org.uk/
 
Poggio Argentiera - http://poggioargentiera.com/

Gambero Rosso website (in English) - http://www.gamberorosso.it/en/

An explanantion of Gambero Rosso on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambero_Rosso