Camel Vineyard Day Trip

Throughout our trip to the South West we saw fliers for Camel Valley vineyard. So on one of the less sunny days we embarked on the forlorn drive over Bodmin Moor and over to the Camel Valley, which is only a short hop from Padstow and the gastronomic wonders of Rick Stein and perhaps more interestingly, Margots.

The Camel Valley Vineyard has become increasingly well known and respected for their sparkling white and rose wines as well as for their fresh and not quite ripe whites. Given that these are just the sorts of wines Cowie loves to guzzle it made for an entertaining trip.

We picnicked by the Camel River before our tour, nestling in amongst the nettles and undergrowth next to a charming bridge with nothing but the trickle of water to distract us from our cured meats and salad. If it had been a bit warmer you could have convinced me I was in the Dordogne.

We were given a tour by Sam who is the son of Bob Lindo who owns the vineyard. They planted their first 8,000 vines 20 years ago and have been vanguards of the English wine movement ever since. They grown a mixture of grapes which seem not only tolerant of chilly English conditions but actually well suited. Given that the vineyard is not enormous, their main concern is one of volume. Their wine, apparently, tastes the same from year to year, but the grape yield tends to vary significantly depending broadly on how warm the summer is.

Because the climate isn’t warm enough for the grapes to ripen fully (much like Champagne) the wine tends to express the tart flavours of the English countryside such as elderflower, gooseberry, raspberry and a whole bunch of other limey-green, refreshing flavours.

We sipped our glasses of award winning wines on the balcony overlooking their vineyards and down the valley to Padstow. The Bacchus was like drinking a green fruit sorbet whilst the pink sparkler was beautifully rosey on the eye and better than any of the usual supermarket contenders from Champagne. We’ll be looking out for their wines in the future and can recommend a visit to anyone with an interest in seeing the embryonic first steps of English wine into the mainstream.

If your looking for other things to do on wet or gloomy days when your exploring Devon and Cornwall places then we’ve been recommended other excursions such as Sharpham Vineyards, Ticklemore cheese and a trip to the Helford Oyster beds isn’t a bad shout either.

This is part of a series about our trip around the South West.

Rhone Twitter Taste Live at The Landsdowne

Given my fascination with twitter and social media’s ability to engage an audience outside of the room where the main tasting happening, I was delighted that Robert McIntosh invited me to join in the Rhone Twitter Taste Live event at The Landsdowne Pub in Primrose Hill.

I am very much an amateur when it comes to wine. My grapplings with aromas, finishes, textures and mouth feel is like watching a foal trying to stand up on a sheet of ice set at a 45 degree angle. Given this, and the fact that I probably wasn’t terribly sober when I was writing my wine tweets, here are my twitter notes for everyone’s amusement:

Wine 1. Alain Jaume: I’d happily drink this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. White fruit with a touch of chalk. #ttl

Wine number 2 for #ttl Louis Bernard 2007. Balanced. Sure footed. Like a fruity goat. Dry finish like Jimmy Carr.

Wine 3: Les sablons grenache syrah. Goes well with mega garlicky snails. Rich texture. Am I getting blackberries? #ttl

Wine 4. Gigondas. Wine number 4. Pepper. Tanin. Is that like sun in? But for skin? Slight painty whiff. But that’s just me.

Wine number 5. #ttl. Chateau neuf du pape. I’m a massive fan of this. Ending on a high. Like Amy winehouse probably will.

The wine tasting was fascinating and has opened my mind to the variety of wines available from the Rhone. I feel very under-qualified to talk a lot about wine, so here’s a quick summary of the excellent food we were treated to whilst indulging in our vinuous tweeting!

Roasted chicory with cured ham and thyme was a master dish that was as full of bitterness as it was sweet with ham. It stood up to the robust red wines with aplomb. Arguably it won.

Buttery asparagus with morels on crostini was one of those dishes that I wanted to last forever. Sadly it didn’t and it nearly caused a fight as we squabbled over the last morsel.

The onion tart was, after 4 glasses of red wine, much needed. Luckily it was not only adept at adding ballast, but it was also one of the best tarts I have had in a long time.

Snail puffs were sensationally naughty. Oozing butter and garlic in equal measure, they are probably one of the more illicit things I’ve put in my mouth for a few months. They were just the ticket to make me feel uber French.

The baked eggs in a red wine sauce were magnificently cooked. The yolks ran and the white was firm.

The food was a perfect foil for the wine. There’s nothing like good wine and food to bring people together and spark stories. It was a shining example of how to host a gastronomic blogging event. Next time I’m in need of a feed in Primrose Hill I’ll be heading to The Landsdowne for starter and The Engineer for main course.

The evening was a huge success. Thank you Robert for being such a generous host and to both TTL and The Landsdowne for making it all possible. Just look at the trouble you caused…

Green and Blue Chocolate and Wine Pairing

Cowie and I were delighted to be invited to a fantastic wine and chocolate pairing evening at Green and Blue in East Dulwich. It’s a brilliant wine merchant, deli and restaurant that I am very glad to have come across given that it’s well within range from Brixton.

As the sign righty points out they were the best small wine merchant in the UK at the Decanter awards.

The purpose of our session was to show a bunch of food bloggers that some wines are a great match for certain types of chocolate. For far better write ups than this one, have a look at what Gourmet Chick had to say as well as what the lovely Dinner Diary thought. I’m sure Chris from Cheese and Biscuits, Helen from Food Stories and Katrina from Chocolate Chilli Cupcake will all have something to say about it too. So keep your eyes peeled.

Kate Thal, the owner and sommelier extraordinaire, introduced us to the concept of pairing wine with chocolate with an almost poetic spiel before letting us meander our way through the tasting at our own pace. All the wines were paired with chocolate from Montezuma which I have now fallen head over heels with.

We started with a New Zealand Pinot Noir called Amisfield that almost paired with some wonderful Montezuma milk chocolate. Maybe we hadn’t warmed up yet. But we all felt it didn’t marry as well as we expected. Having said that, once the wine had settled in the glass and we weren’t so greedy with the amount of chocolate we were scoffing the results were much better. A hit… but not a palpable one.

The second wine was far more robust. If the Pinot was like Darren Anderton, this one was more like a refined version of David Batty in his glory days at Leeds United. The Radford Dale Merlot, from South Africa, was greeted with adoration by the group. If Helen of Troy’s face launched a thousand ships, then Sideways launched a thousand years of woe on merlot (pronounced the American way). With Montezuma’s sensationally good dark side of milk chocolate it was sublime.

Steven hypothesised that the higher the cocoa content of the chocolate the more tannin the wine needs to be able to cope. The next pairing confirmed this immediately. We were introduced to a wine from the Bandol region in Southern France.

The wine was dark. Dusty. Intensely savoury. Almost gasping to be paired with chocolate so dark it might well contain anti-matter. Put these two broody beasts together and you are left with a scene from a gothic novel. I doubt this would be to everyone’s tastes. It was quite divisive. But if you like things like licorice, bitter marmalade and you smoke 80 a day, then this would suit you perfectly!

The night, as Harvey Dent says, is darkest before the dawn… and so verily we were led unto the promised land of white chocolate. I know I’m supposed to screw up my face and look down on white chocolate with the sort of disdain Parisian men reserve for American tourists ordering “freedom fries”, but I rather like it. Especially when it’s from Montezuma. Whilst I liked the idea of serving it with a light, fresh white from Italy, I wasn’t a big fan of the Muscato d’Asti called Bera. No doubt it was a fine example of the wine. But after all the bitterness and depth of the darker chocolates and reds, I just found it a bit sweet. That said, I did appreciate ending on a light and floral note.

We were treated to a fantastic cheese and meat platter at the end which made for a very welcome respite from the onset of diabetes and obesity. Only then did it dawn on me that we’d done everything backwards! Maybe it would all work better in reverse? Who’s up for a reverse dinner party?

Thanks again to Kate and the team at Green and Blue. You’ve opened our minds and made me realise how hard it is to write about wine!

Wine Poll

I’m interested in why people buy different wines. If you buy wines around the £4 mark on a regular basis it would be great if you could put a tick in a box that suits. Thanks!