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Wine

Barolo and Barberesco

Last night I went to a tasting of the two finest wines of Piedmont – Barbaresco and Barolo.  Both big expensive wines. Piedmont is surrounded by the Alps and almost every vineyard is on a slope. It’s truffle country with hazelnut trees where rice is grown too. The main grape is [...]

October 8, 2020 // 0 Comments

Left Bank of Bordeaux

Last night we tasted the wines of the left bank of Bordeaux. Our tutor began with a lecture on the history of the wine region. 2000 years ago the Romans introduced wine there.  However the real breakthrough came some 1600 years  on. The Dutch irrigated the Medoc basin and Bordeaux started to [...]

September 30, 2020 // 0 Comments

The price of and on expectation

A good friend of mine who is a well-informed wine connoisseur has been preparing a list of wines from his favoured suppliers. The first list was priced between £8 and £24. The second was more expensive going up to £38. I have yet to taste the second batch but I made the point to my friend that [...]

June 20, 2020 // 0 Comments

Getting a taste for it

The drinking and appreciation of wine is arguably one of the great hobbies of Man. There’s been a lot of it about for tens of millennia and who could argue that relaxing over a glass of something rather special isn’t one of the great pleasures of life? I’m certainly not going to. Across the [...]

November 23, 2019 // 0 Comments

A wine tasting with a difference

The local wine tastings I irregularly attend are as interesting for the effect of the wine as their quality. Last night we had a private cellar evening where attendees brought their own wine as well as the wine tutor. There were ten present and at first a certain awkwardness as the wine tutor was [...]

November 15, 2019 // 0 Comments

Second day

This proved to be a full-on day of three wine tastings, a visit to Lourmarin, and a more relaxed dinner back at base camp. The Luberon, the area we visited, is technically not in Provence but in Vaucluse, a different department across the Durance Riveer. Loumarin is one of those picture-postcard [...]

September 7, 2019 // 0 Comments

Wines of Provence

Provence is chiefly know for its Roses but in fact produces fine whites and reds especially in the Southern Rhône (Chateauneuf du Pape, Gigondas spring to mind). The problem is the Mistral high wind. My favorite rose The Rosalie is grown at 600m above the worst of the effects of the Mistral and [...]

September 5, 2019 // 0 Comments

Watching the world and frightening yourself

One by-product of being someone who daily trawls the UK newspaper websites over the years is that one notices the frequency with which reports of latest scientific and medical research findings, particularly relating to health and ageing, appear to contradict each other. Thus one day we learn that [...]

March 1, 2019 // 0 Comments

Cheese and wine pairing

It was back to school for me too last night as I attended a wine course locally entitled cheese and wine pairing. One of the weaknesses of a wine tasting is often no food is ever served – other than a wafer biscuit – but wine is almost invariably the accompaniment of food. We tend to be [...]

January 23, 2019 // 0 Comments

Gin tasting /part two

I enjoyed meeting J.S. Bird on HMS Tickler. To complete the circle here are a few gins I enjoy not on J. S. Bird’s list: Gin Mare This is a gin distilled south of Barcelona best drunk with Fevertree Mediterranean tonic. As Bob explained when he dispensed this gin with great flourish, Fevertree is [...]

November 1, 2018 // 0 Comments

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