Hotel du Vin - Summer of Pinot Tasting‏

A tasting of Pinots of various colours at Cambridge Hotel du Vin

I've always had a soft spot for Hotel du Vin; it's the sort of place that makes you feel a bit more sophisticated just by being there.

It had been too long since my last proper visit, so I went to their Summer Of Pinot tasting; the wines had been arranged in flights to highlight the differences between terroirs and were served with canapes.

Fizz

Prosecco pale, light, refreshing, crisp and elegant - an aperitif

Cremant d'Alsace mostly Pinot Blanc; 6m on lees, sandy yellow, fuller, weightier, very fresh - match with light canapes

Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris

Lageder Pinot Blanc (Sudtirol) aromatic, floral and mineral; pure and precise with an alpine freshness. Very elegant.

Biecher Pinot Blanc (Alsace) honeysuckle, ripe orchard fruit and sweet spice; weightier, waxier and more substantial.

Biecher Pinot Gris (Alsace) yellower, full and hedonistic with citrussy tropical fruit and lychees. Lively, adept and assured.

Pinot Noir

Les Nuages (Loire) juicy, crunchy red fruits with a touch of spice - a light, fresh Pinot with excellent underpinnings

La Crema (Monterrey) 6m in oak; an all-you-can-eat Pinot with a heavy American accent; dark plum fruit with a toasty-oaky nose and a thwack of alcohol; ripe, sweet and substantial.

My top wines were the minerally Lageder Pinot Blanc and the ripe, adept Biecher Pinot Gris.

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Delamotte Brut NV, Corney & Barrow

A classy, elegant Blanc de Blancs fizz from Corney & Barrow

Very pale sandy yellow; toasty-leesy with ripe orchard fruit; fine mousse, pleasingly sharp and persistent, very well-structured.

Very Good - a perfect aperitif.

Provided for review - £28.96 per 75cl bottle.

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Two Everyday Bordeaux

Two everyday Bordeaux from Dourthe, via The Wine Society and Booth's

Dourthe SB No 1, Bordeaux, 2014 (£7.95, The Wine Society) zippy, zesty, aromatic Sauvignon from Bordeaux; modern and fresh with a waxy, saline texture and a whiff of white pepper.

Pure and clean yet weighty. Very Good - and excellent value.

Match with pork and sage terrine or monkfish and herb broth.

Chateaux de Ricaud, Bordeaux Superieur, 2012 (£9.95, Booth's) juicy Bordeaux full of cherries and coffee grounds with fresh acidity. It has an old-world firmness and structure, but is slightly hot and alcoholic.

Match with meaty stews and spicy sausages

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Gran Familia Clasica, 2007, Valdepenas

A full-on, oaky Spanish red with a lot of oak, a bit of age and not much else - from Tesco

Expressive berry and spice aromas but rather baked and lacks textural interest; a used-car salesman of a wine, it grabs your attention but can't quite back it up.

Quirkily expressive, but ultimately rather vacuous; more Russell Brand than Jack Sparrow.

Retails for around £10; a better bet for a £10, well-made, Spanish red with plenty of fruit and oak is this Beronia Dos Maderas Crianza 2008‏.

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Paul Mas Languedoc Fizz

Three fizzes from Languedoc producer Paul Mas

If it's a pleasing indulgence to be able to start a meal with a bottle of fizz, to do it three nights in a row with visiting friends seems like the ultimate decadence.

All three of these wines from Paul Mas were very pleasant indeed - crisp, fresh and well-made. They all share something of a family resemblance so you could pick any and not be disappointed.

Prima Perla Cremant de Limoux Rosé Brut ripe redcurrant fruit, toastiness and precise acidity

Prima Perla Cremant de Limoux Brut ripe pear fruit, elegant and fresh

Prima Perla Blanquette de Limoux, blanc de blancs ripe pear and melon fruit with citrus freshness; a good light aperitif

Provided for review.

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Chocolate and Wine Matching with Cocoa Runners / Corney & Barrow

Matching chocolate from Cocoa Runners to wines from Corney & Barrow

Chocolate, it seems, is following wine, cheese, coffee and now beer in becoming a crafted, artisan product for the great parlour game of dinner-party one upmanship.

The latest hipster trend is bean-to-bar production of craft chocolates from all over the world; Cocoa Runners, then, are ahead of the zeitgeist.

They were at a Corney & Barrow Christmas In July event showcasing their chocolates with matching wines.

My rule for chocolate matching is simple - banyuls or whisky and espresso with very dark chocolate.

The first principle of any match is that the wine must be sweeter than the dessert.

Secondly, chocolate is savoury, bitter, fatty and sweet so all these aspects need to be matched even before you start thinking about textures, aromas and so on.

Much as I liked the wines and chocolates separately, I did not find any combination in which the wine was enhanced by the addition of chocolate - invariably, the wines were overpowered with the sole exception of a Vin Santo which had just enough rich, savoury sweetness to stand up to a white chocolate.

This led to a long discussion with Cocoa Runners founder Spencer Hyman about possible better matches - Madeira, port, dark sherries and straw wines all have the potential sweet-savouriness to stand up to chocolate. Islay whiskies might well match with some particularly smokey chocolates that Spencer imports.

There is some fascinating experimentation waiting to happen.

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On Madeira

After a week of drinking Madeira, I find myself thinking about this sub-tropical island's fortified wine (and wine in general) quite differently.

- it has the Classic Wine qualities of tasting strong, important and characterful

- it evokes a time when a physical presence, measured by both size and character, was the mark of one's importance

- it has a pre-industrial, pre-middle-class, agricultural physicality, with a rocky, untamed, southern-European intensity

- it matches best with the strong, peasanty foods of this sunburnt, windswept Atlantic isle; olives and strong cheeses, tuna steaks and meat skewers

- by comparison, modern-style fruit-forward wines seem lacking and insubstantial; it is a suit of armour next to business casual, Henry VIII vs Steve Jobs, a stallion beside a smartphone.

It is so tied up with its sense of place that I can barely imagine drinking it back in the UK, except on a hot summer's eve with the doors to the garden flung open.

Madeira once occupied the place now held by Champagne - the wine of kings and conquest, of celebrations and ceremonies, it marked victories and launched ships. That world has now largely disappeared and, with it, Madeira's ubiquity.

The Parker-Point chasing of big ripeness and intense concentration appears like a misguided attempt to imbue the essence of fortified wines into table wines.

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Thanks to MW student Daniela Shelton for the main image, borrowed from her excellent article on Madeira: https://danigongoozler.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/if-you-like-bottled-electricity-you-will-like-madeira-rui-falcao/