Despite the narrative the web has spun around Galoupet, you should know that this is not a restaurant. Don’t come here expecting to be fed, because you will be a little confused. Even the decor strays far from the norm, like the faintly perfumery, sterile ivory walls and beech floors, mirrors on either side and (if memory serves) a skylight. There was so much light coming from all corners of the room, that we could only be here for a spa treatment.

Such words are not usually applied to restaurant copy: ‘light, fresh, clean’ , ‘deep understanding’ , ‘adapted’. Let’s throw sensory in there too. This was as close an experience to having a detox treatment for the tastebuds… not that I’ve ever been to a detox session for any other bodily part. In practical terms, most of the dishes could pass as salads. There’s fruit in nearly every dish, I felt an eerie sense of being cleansed after the meal.

Yes, fella, this is not the usual restaurant, let alone wine bar, there is something of an unorthodox approach going on here. The emphasis on the grapes are a refreshing change, there aren’t many wine-led restaurants in town, even though most restaurants will try their bestest to flog matching wines with the food, it often feels second best to the food; and for the case of the wine bar, food tends to take a backseat to the wine. And that’s where Galoupet differs from the crowd, supposedly to take on the enviable task of bringing harmony to the disciplines of pleasure.

The owners are a family of winemakers. Naturally it is named after the family business which is based in Provence, Chateau de Galoupet, and quite expectedly, they sell their family wines at this London outpost too. At the front entrance is a long table which I imagine is so patrons can stand around and constantly top up short measures of their 36 wines or so which are in constant rotation from their Enomatic wine preservation machines.

Galoupet may well be the first restaurant/bar to visibly use the pay-per-measure system, but it certainly isn’t the first to deploy it in this country. As far as I know, a similar system has been going for years at the wine shop , The Sampler in Islington. I may love my Rieslings and my Spatburgunders, but I’d rather not splash on whole bottles of Gajas or Rothschilds, so the system is useful in a kind of socialist way of purchasing sips of expensive wine, whenever the owners decide to pop something abit special into the enomatics. Like I don’t know, how about a 1990 Vauchrains, from Nuits Saint Georges by Robert Chevillon, for example. I’ve done the impromptu self-led wine sipping at The Sampler many times before… it can be a rather liberating experience. You end up with all kinds of fruit, rust and mineral flavours swirling around your head after four or fiveakers. Naturally it is named aftt of course.

One of the family wines is a 2010 Rose, which costs £4.10 for half a measure (125ml) , and it is a staggering wine. Crispy, fresh, acidic and verging on the fizzy, it evaporates like ether as it goes does, fleetingly young at its core. So shoot me, I like delightful young juices that are shy on the palatte. Like a fizzy white wine with rose petals dropped in. Doing the math, if you expect the majority of the meal to be for tasting different types of wine, with the odd dish of food thrown in for distraction, then Galoupet can be rather fun. This was the first glass.

So let’s move to the first dish: Figs, fregola, purple basil, orange, konbu, hazelnut , £8.50, the large portion.

Yes very light, amazingly refreshing honey like figs and crunchy walnuts, acid orange, a rather dainty dish of food to look at in and a faint sense of Japanese cuisine stirred in with Italian. Not too bad, but a mere slice of fig hardly passes as a large.

Octopus, fennel, kohlrabi, miso, £9.50

Citrusy, it balanced out nicely with the crispy Galoupet rose, generally clean tasting, nicely cooked but really also rather quite bland.

Stone bass, burnt tomatoes, coriander, £8

The skin was burnt to a char, so too were the tomatoes, accompanied by a tomato paste, which I hazard a guess that this was a variant of romesco. Who knows.

O’Shea’s Onglet Steak, mandarin, peanuts, papaya, £12.50 (large)

For the meats, I asked for another 125ml, this time a glass of Riesling by Heinz Schmitt. I failed to check the harvest. This came with a mesmerizing hue of amber. Flavours of honey and hints of glue (or petrol, you get the idea) – as you’d expect from Rieslings – but this was a little more complex as the citrus was verging on sour. An interesting wine, wet and heavy, more than muscular enough to match with the meat.

O’Sheas is gold standard beef, from Darragh on the other side of Knightsbridge, and is impossible to muck up. This came properly medium rare, and hard to fault such good meat of course. The little cooking done to it was adequate for it to shine. Perhaps a little unnecessary were the sweet papaya which accompanied the beef – sweet steak was a little alien to me.

Chilli pork ‘rib eye’, cucumber, coriander, lime, £11.50.

Finally, we ended the brief meal with this Vietnamese style grilled pork. The pork was expertly grilled, juicy but because it tasted so much like something from the pho mile, I thought the meat yearned for some steamed jasmine rice, and perhaps an egg over it. It was just nude, it really needed some carbs. Not to mention the rather steep price, it could have really done with a little covering up.

I ended the meal with a short 50ml measure of a superb dessert Tokaj… beyond that, details of the provenance escapes me. Sweet and citrusy.

Sweet and citrusy pretty much summed up the meal. We paid £57.25. As a restaurant, I thought the kitchen output was irresolute, food certainly came across as second fiddle to the wines. In a way, it was to be expected, this is first and foremost a wine bar, but for the most part, I did think food was well cooked. I did notice that we were bread-free for the entire meal, personally, it was an aberrant sensation altogether. Fibre, protein, nectar, alcohol, fruit, fibre, fruit.

This begs the comparison to the admirable 28-50 (which I like), a wine bar by the Nordic owners of sleeper hit Texture (which I also like) – that restaurant has more of a urban vibe going for it. Galoupet is the complete opposite, this wine bar feels like a retreat, it’s a spa treatment, something that belongs in Monocle. A facial.

The edible bits of Galoupet are a little Tinto Brass, it’s self indulgent, but the drinking parts are absolutely gorgeous. This type of conceptual, sensory stuff is always going to attract negativity from anti-yuppies who will be quick to write this off as an expensive waste of time, but I ask you to give this a closer look, because this is one of few places where you can go and try alot of different wines, without having to fork out a small fortune. That’s relative speak of course, because it’s not exactly cheap in real terms, but as you know, wine is a game of try, try try, to expand your mental catalogue of what different varietals are capable of. Or so I think, I’m not really the kind of guy to engage a discussion on wine in this sort of capacity. Come on, be abit adventurous, step away from the chardonnay and try a Vouvray. So for reference, take the opinion of a local wine buff (maybe Andy at Spittoon, Blyde on Intoxicating or Gastro1 the Epicurean ) on Galoupet before making the visit.

The Gist of It

Galoupet
French, Wine Restaurant £40pp
13 Beauchamp Place SW3 1NQ
Tel : 0207 036 3600
Tube : Knightsbridge

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From the creators of the sleeper hit of the century, the Icelandic inspired, macaron-winning, Texture, comes Rousset & Sverrisson’s next high octane, vinely-charged collaboration, titled 28-50. The name is a geographical tip of the hat to all the world’s vineyards, most of which lie between the latitudes of 28° to the North and 50° to the south, not that I know what that actually means, obviously. Fashioned in a similar way to the hugely successful Terroirs, these are restaurants that lure the serious food addicts in – the proverbial mouse trap – and then throw them off guard with an astounding list of wines, in an vain attempt to convert them to the darkside. To that end, Sverrisson and Rousset have installed Paul Walsh – previously sous chef to Clare @ Royal Hospital Road – in the kitchen to churn out top quality, French inspired dishes. You’ll probably recall the gushing remarks I made, when I visited Texture a few months earlier, and so I was naturally perky (and melancholic) when I learnt that Laissez Fare was conducting his official leaving do at this restaurant.

We were a table of twelve (or so), but to be honest, things became a little hazy after I started ingesting alcohol, starting with an awkwardly short measure (75ml) of Picpoul de Pinet (by Domaine Laurier, 2009 for £2.45) which was a little papery, crispy and carried a faint whizz of fizz. There were familiar faces, Gourmet Chick, Mathilde, UN and then there was the we-meet-at-last meeting, pleasantly surprised to have finally shook the hand which writes An American in London. She eventually revealed the riddle – and inspiration – behind her blog’s URL (R.W. Apple, Bing it!) and is probably the last blogger in England yet to fall in line with the Twitterati. She’s still interested in old fashioned, real-life conversations, you see.

We chose from a party menu, about £30 for 3 courses, and I had done a quick side by side with what’s online and twas evident that this was a subset of the main menu, rather than a bespokely limited offering. However, in the spirit of truly never doing things by halves, take this blog post with the heaviest pinch of salt, as I intend to follow-up with a fuller and more representative experience.

Confit trout, fennel, mustard dressing.

Immediately, I thought this dish had shades of Texture written all over it, the gently cooked fish, the ghastly regurgitate-it food styling, the dash of dill and cubed vegetables. Sweetly, pickly and a cream-like sauce played nicely with the natural oils of the trout – which was gentle, soft but only just lacked the fine sous-vide touch, so perfectly illustrated and gloriously exploited at Texture. I enjoyed this.

The White: Zeleni Silvanec, Marof, ’08.

Slovenian wine – a first for me – was paired with our selection of starters, which I have to admit, I wasn’t really paying much attention to. The wine hails from Northern Slovenia and the varietal is Zeleni Silvanec or Sylvaner, which again is a first for me. It carried a natural fizz, I detected nuts and zest. Very young, very clean and highly charged as it coursed through my system.

Onglet of beef, chips and sauce choron.

For mains, I opted for the obvious choice of L’onglet. I was a little worried at first, since the waitress didn’t ask how we’d like our steaks, the rest assumed it was going to be medium-rare, but I wouldn’t mind it a little bloodier, considering the cut.

My fears were mostly unfounded, as it arrived perfectly medium rare. I have a feeling the steak had been pre-bashed – it was the flattest onglet I had ever seen, and surprisingly the tenderest I had ever eaten. Grain was unnoticeable, the natural bitterness of onglet was pleasing, and I was hugely enjoying the – now mushy – spongy texture of the steak. It was well-seasoned, but perhaps just a tad too much so, it had me wondering if powdered tenderiser had also been applied. Nevertheless, it was a sterling example of an onglet. Extra points for the extra touches, arranged crispy chips and a sweetly caramelised shallot and props for serving a sauce choron. It tasted like a chilli bearnaise to me, a shade of orange, which I found to be rather intriguing. I had to google this, and as it turns out, sauce Choron is named after Alexandre Étienne Choron, a chef who lived in the late 19th Century, whom had invented his namesake sauce, a variant of the bearnaise, without tarragon or chervil, replacing with an enriched tomato puree instead. Personally, a brand new way to eat steaks.

The Red: Syrah, Mullineux, Swartland, South Africa, 2008.

The red was eye-openingly brilliant, this you could stick a straw in and drink it like it was the juice of the gods. Smoky, bitter, creamy and jammy. Very sweet for a Syrah. I pour as much as I could in my glass, to the limits of being considerate to others also sharing the bottle. Or so I thought.

Rum baba.

Pudding was fairly standard and traditional, the lightness of the cake was appreciated, but I could have done with the cheese platter (from La Fromagerie) to be honest.

We each paid about £60, £50 for those who ate less, and drank less, and I think everybody had a great time. I think the food is good enough, but the wines were better. Especially since food seemed more like a side show to the fabulous way the wines have been curated and presented. An entertaining side show nonetheless.

Speaking of the list, it features 15 whites and 15 reds which could be had by the glass, measuring conveniently at 75ml, 125ml and at 250ml, the latter of which is probably on the menu for legacy reasons. As I alluded to earlier, I enjoyed 28-50, and I would be interested to return to sample a flight of 75mls; afterall Xavier Rousset is an award-winning sommelier. Xavier also conducts monthly wine workshops for £25 per head, that seems intriguing, as of writing, his sessions appear to be fully booked to October. Also, his ‘Collectors List’ is put together from private collectors who have agreed to sell their precious stock on consignment. I’ve seriously gone off the trail in my wine education of late, so this seems an ideal route to get back into it. I do have to entertain relatives visiting London soon. I didn’t really take to the cavernous, subterraneo setting at first, but after slapping on the tipple goggles, everything looked woodenly sexy anyway. Maybe it was just a little too bright. The force is strong with this one folks. Good food, good wine, good service, a wine restaurant for wine and restaurant collectors alike.

The Gist of It

28-50 Wine Workshop & Kitchen
Wine bar, £60pp plus tipples
140 Fetter Lane EC4A 1BT
Tel: 020 7242 8877
Tube: Chancery Lane

Gulp: Guy Dimond ; Dos Hermanos ; David Sexton ; Gastro1

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All text and photography on this blogpost is copyright and belongs to Kang Leong, LondonEater.com. If you repost this without my permission, bad things will happen. So please don’t do it.

I love to wine and dine. However, my shrinking wardrobe and bank balance doesn’t always permit my indulgences on a more frequent basis. While surfing the luminaries of foodie-interwebs, I came across the expertly written, if subdued opinion of London’s newest wine restaurant. High Timber stores 40,000 bottles of wine in the cellars beneath the restaurant, not to mention the use of Dyson busting, the ‘Xcelarator’ in the toilets. Needless to say I was intrigued by their choice of hand dryers and was delighted to take up the offer of a free meal when it came knocking.

Xcelerate me.

At the very end, I popped my hands under the glorious machine, and was relieved it didn’t cut my hands off. But I am certain to have incurred long term damage to my hearing instead. Blech. Zipping around the basement, co-owner Neleen was on hand to show us around the 40,000 bottle storing cellar – oh chilly, a good sign for the wine I’m sure; my presence not so much. And then, one of the funniest moments in my blogging career happened when Neleen turned round and said “So which magazine do you write for” , I said “I’m a blogger… ya know, LondonEater?”

“Huh?” puzzled and speechless, I wish I captured the moment with my camera as she handed over her handpicked bottle of Paul Cluver ’04 Pinot after I told her I have occasional wet dreams about those delicate grapes.

Mmm, back to the main dining area then.

Unbiased biasness

I shant dwell any longer on my complete and total objectivity when it comes to freebies – yeargh its murkier and harder to come across as the ultimate truth from the bottom of my belly when I didn’t pay for the food, but I think I am managing ok so far; still if you don’t believe this, disregard it and read reviews of meals funded from my shrinking bank account instead. (ie: turning down freefood is the hardest)

The first course: Roasted Scallops, Apple Salsa, Sweetcure Bacon, Basil Cress £9.50

That is a pretty intense puree. I took my brother with me for this visit. He choose a seafood starter. The scallops were lightly cooked, carried curious tastes of seaweed in the marrow-like sweetish apple puree of sorts. Yeah its ok, a little subdued in my opinion and it didn’t jump around like it was freshly reeled in. The crispy bacon was frankly quite puzzling – it didn’t really go with the scallops, it was just there, decoration or garnish? Either way, it’s unnecessary.

The menu is super short and can be read in approximately fifteen point nine six seconds. Its very bog standard, a straight entrée, main, pudding read: not a criticism, just a little uninteresting that’s all.

Pulled Shoulder Middle White Pork, Apple and Vanilla Puree, Crackling Wafer £7.50

While my brother did rather better with his scallops, I didn’t quite agree with my pork starter. Apart from the meat being a pretty soft texture, it was much too bland for me. It seemed as though the meat was blanched with nothing but boiling water and the chef forgot to bring his salt to work. I think what made things worse was the very sweet, almost custardy puree, making this a very tarty piece of pork. Again, it’s quite puzzling, was I having pudding to start? More worringly, was my entrée pretending to be a pudding. A whimsical start and I am feeling about as bland as the pork, shame because the pork was indeed quite soft on the chew.

Whining

So far, its quite underwhelming, but perhaps it could be that Chef is still sharpening his knife skills in the kitchen.. he really should spend abit more time tasting his own food, and maybe even scope out the competition around town because boy, is there some competition in wine bar land at the moment.

On the other hand, our wines were excellent. We started with a glass of chardonnay (which name I did not jot down) that was acidic, crisp and light with a tinge of tropical fruit, vanilla, fig (or dates I can’t make it out exactly) and a hint of heat. The bottle of Red Neleen handed over to two twenty somethings was eye opening. Smooth and rich, but with a mineral characteristic closer to a Burgundy than an S.A. Pinot, the smoky oaky fruitiness was forward drinking and almost as elegant as its Burgundian cousins.

Right. I ordered the £27 ribeye steak.

All the trimmings, all the trimmeringings indeed. Let’s go round the chopper block, giant mushroom, umami rich check; battered onion rings helping to grease the gastro gears, check; sweet roasted cherry tomatoes; check, check; 350g of matured ribeye beef, chec… no where to be found. Now, I can’t measure with my eyes, but surely that can’t be 350g of meat, can it? Anywho – taster notes: The meat itself was quite flavoursome, although it’s less beefy than I’d prefer it to be. The texture is perfect though, delicately soft, it tastes as if it had be pounded down by Ricky Hatton for 28 days, and is great to chew on. With lots of charcoal in the flavour, I suppose it’s an indication that it was cooked to a proper medium rare as requested. It was a good piece of meat, just didn’t have that oomph for me. The steak is also rather subdued in flavour. Thankfully I added a pot of cabernet jus with the steak because this really made the steak fly. It sparked and sizzled away with the red wine gravy – red fruits, jammy, rich and just luxurious; it breathed much needed life to the lifeless meat.

Next.

Loin of Venison and Braised Haunch, peppered red cabbage, quince puree £21.00

One steak is more than enough for the table, so my brother went with game instead. This is more successful than the beef. The tender venison was nicely cooked to a medium rare. The smokey game was a welcomed change to the flavourless steak. The dish is good, but certainly not great and there were far too many sweetish elements involved. This time, in the form of a quince puree and the balance between too much sugary versus something very gamey just made it abit strange. On the side was a curious red cabbage wrapping around a mushy haunch mince, more akin to a kidney or a pate of some sort. I couldn’t quite understand it, perhaps it was just me but I did not enjoy the Chef’s combinations. Everything is abit off balance, and off balance is not a good thing.

All in all, the meats were alright, not world shaking stuff, and for £27 one would have anticipating a fire breathing dragon but in its place was a rather harmless, furry little gremlin. One who is much too sweet to mount a proper attack of the senses.

Pudded out.

Right, I sussed it – the sous chef must have accidentally passed the sugar instead of the salt. With so much sweetness going around, I was expecting a pudding explosion because this chef seems to have a real sweet tooth. Enter the fruit bomb.

Fruit Terrine £7.50

Gorgeous fresh fruits pressed together into a concentrated and intense terrine. Now we’re talking – instant classic here, and one of the more innovative puds Ive tried in recent memory. As expected the juicy layers were shooting all kinds of fruit infusions toward my tastebuds and the concentration of citrusy mangoes, pineapples and blood oranges really took this dish to the moon. On the side was a honey-rich flavoured mango sorbet which I really enjoyed as well. Really lively and it wiped my palette clean of the distant memory of the bland pork.

Also very good was the solidly made chocolate tart served with a lively blood orange sorbet on the side – both are excellent, on its own,  not so much when eaten together.

A delicate balancing act.

The food at High Timber is abit like the view at High Timber. Situated along the river, it advertises itself  as one which has ‘one of the best views’ of any restaurant in the country. Yeah that would be true if it were not for the four metre wall obstructed it. I had to stretch my neck to catch a good glimpse of the millennium bridge, and even then, it wasn’t really that exciting. I ate on a boat cruise once which whizzed up and down the Thames for four hours; I distinctly remember eating my pudding as I passed under the imposing London Eye. Now that is a view.

Having said that – food isn’t that bad, they do a lot of things right, but perhaps on a personal level, the balance/combination of flavours just didn’t work for me – abit of a one trick pony in the sweet plus meat section, perhaps its done in this way to compliment the wines, but I didn’t see any wine recommendations to go with individual dishes on the menu, I think the connection between the wine and the restaurant is a little lost, or perhaps not emphasised enough.

In terms of food – I believe the chef really needs to cut down on the sugar and perhaps invest abit of his time researching other types of umami combos. However, this place does churn out excellent puddings – the fruit terrine is quite special and I could think of the myriad of wines which could compliment the dish.

Wines, well Neleen choose some excellent stuff for us, the wine cellar tour was very cool if abit brief, so top marks for that.

Perhaps they are still working out the kinks, after all it’s barely a couple of months old; as it stands, its merely an average wine restaurant, not particularly bad, but nothing particularly outstanding either. The all important price point – £8 starters, £20 mains is not expensive, but certainly not budget friendly either. For that sort of price range, there are lot of places which can produce a much more pleasurable dining experience. On the other hand, their set lunch menu is priced aggressively at £15 for two courses and £18 for three – a far more attractive option, and one I expect most diners to take if one so chooses to dine here.

A restaurant with half a view is nice to have, but in my humble opinion they need to pay abit more attention to the food if they are to please those who love to wine and dine.

The Gist of It.

High Timber Official Site
8 High Timber Street EC4V 3PA 020 7248 1777
£40pp plus wine

Verdict: Wines are good, food could be better for the price, overall could be alot more exciting that its current iteration.

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So you’re in restaurant and you’ve ordered all this wonderful food, but looked at the wine list and got stuck. You look up and you feel the stress of a table full of expectant faces giving you that ‘well, what do we drink look?’. Fear not, because here are some quick tips which will help you navigate through that peril.

Following on from part four (pairing food with wine), we’ll now move to talk about a few strategies to picking the best wine to suit the food when you are out and about.

1. Decide after you order food

It is only table manners to order what you want to eat ( I always do ) before you decide on what to drink, it helps the sommelier narrow down something cool for you. It’s no secret that your meal can be amplified several times when paired with the right vino, on the flipside, a bad bottle can ruin the whole experience when it feels like you are washing down that duck with turpentine.

2. The sommelier is your best friend

Ask him/her lots of questions. If a restaurant has a dedicated sommelier, its their job to help you choose. Even if you know alot about wine, don’t try to do his job, let him entertain you. Afterall, the sommelier drinks & buys everything on the winelist (full-time) , it’ll make for some great insights. I always learn something new when talking to sommeliers. So quiz him, ask him what’s good, what’s special, what’s worth it and what goes down well with that flamin’ steak.

3. Remember the great wine markup

This might break your heart alittle, restaurants tend to have ridiculous mark-ups on their wines. Something in the shops which sell for £10 might cost you anywhere between £25 to £30, if you’re lucky. Which is why I tend to avoid stuff I can find in the local oddbins. You might ask, ‘ How do I know if I can get it in a shop or not? ‘ , well, the truth is you won’t. This just comes with experience, but what I tend to notice is that serious establishments will have a couple of rarities from relatively unknown vineyards which haven’t achieved cult status yet. This works to your advantage because sometimes it can be unique and affordable. 

Do abit of jostling with the sommelier, reject the first few boring cab savs or merlots (unless if he strongly recommends it, in which case you can’t say no) he offers and wait for him to scratch his head and go ‘ Hmm, well actually we do have this really nice one from a random vineyard that you’ve probably never heard of..’ Result. Go for that.

4. Bottle, glass or carafe?

It’s quickly becoming a trend. Younger restaurants like Arbutus or L’Autre Pied tend to offer wines by the carafes… and this is a real godsend. Not only is it more wallet friendly, it allows you to try a wider range of wines during your meal. You can easily get about 3 small glasses from a carafe so if you’re in a group of three, I strongly recommend this and then just move on to another wine.

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as ‘the perfect wine for the perfect dish’ , no. I do, however believe that there are several candidates which go well with what you’re eating. And besides, if you’re having multiple dishes, there are many flavour profiles which have to be matched. Hence, the more variation, the better the meal gets, simply because there’s more flavour swirling around – heady.

5. If there’s no love, then send it back

If you think your wine might be corked – then it’s perfectly ok to send it back. Although, this is rare, sometimes it can happen. What do I mean when the wine is corked? Well, if you feel like the wine has gone off and just tastes wrong then send it back. Its also the reason why the sommelier will stand by as he pours out a sip for you to swirl, sniff & taste. It’s just mainly to check for corkage. Of course, if you’re not sure, then just ask the sommelier, he’s your best friend remember? 

6. Remember your friends

Don’t leave out your pals and be sensitive to what others like/dislike. But you already know this don’t you?

7. Finally …

Have a great meal, have a great time and make sure you enjoy yourself because that’s what this is all about. If there’s something you particularly enjoy then by all means ignore all advice and go for it because you’re paying money so that you can enjoy it and not anybody else. That’s the beauty of food & drink, it’s something that’s incorruptable by opinion because if you think it’s good – then it is.

Coming in part six..

We’ve covered alot of ground in five posts about wine, and so in part six we’re going to navigate away from this subject and talk about some wine alternatives. Yup, you read that right, alternatives. See you in part six.

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Last week we talked about buying & storing wine. Hopefully you would have found the tips useful. Today, it’s going to be a relatively breezy ( though fairly contentious ) post as we move to talk about pairing food with wine.

You will appreciate that  different styles of wine work best when paired with particular foods. When paired correctly, the flavours can bounce off each other and help accentuate the overall profile swirling in your mouth. It’s abit like dunking donuts into coffee, or scones & tea or hot chocolate fudge sauce on vanilla ice cream. When complimenting flavours come together, it can explode.

Boom.

I’ll state now that it’s difficult for me to recommend specific bottles of wine, instead I’m going to suggest the grape varietal which best fits the food. For more information on grape varietals, read part one here.

As usual, an index of what’s covered in this post:

1. Meat
2. Fish
3. Dessert & aperitifs
4. On its own, a good book or a long conversation

Meat

Lets get the obvious ones out of the way first: Red meats. This will apply to lamb and particularly steak. As it were, red meats have quite dominant flavours and so its only logical to match it with meaty red wines. Purists will suggest that the peppery, fleshy and very full bodied shiraz will meet all your red meat needs, especially if you have ordered your steak medium rare, bloody and with a peppercorn sauce. I tend to find that australian shirazs work perfectly well for red meats, if shiraz is too big of a wine , then go for the smoother & fruitier option of an argentinian tempranillo or even a spanish rioja. I almost never drink white wine with red meat and frankly I don’t think there’s a white wine which can match up to a red. Although, I could be wrong, do let me know if I am (comments!) otherwise, unchallenged always order a full bodied red with red meat.

Poultry & pork , which I’ll lump together as white meat and appropriately, are best paired with white wines. Chablis pops into my mine straight away, which is both refreshing but creamy enough to compare against the texture of the meat. However, it’s not quite as straight forward as red meats, because there are quite alot of ways to marinate white meats and that means that it can get abit complicated when choosing wines. Let me try this then, if it’s a creamy, ‘wine’ sauce, then a Chablis or a chardonnay is really fine. If it’s a thai green curry or an red indian curry or even a heavy chinese sweet & sour sauce, maybe you want to try a cleaner & fruity wine to cut through all that thick and heavy sauce. Fruity italian pinot grigios and lychee flavoured austrain gwerztraminer are good bets. Generally, I wouldnt drink reds with white meat, however lighter body reds such as pinot noirs or merlots can be rather good choices to pair with white meat.

Ok, if all else fails, or if you want a wine which can match up with both white and red meats ie, you’re having more than three courses (you greedy bugger) , or more appropriately serving this at a party then plonk for a cabernet sauvignon. It’s softer than shirazs, it’s fruit driven but it’s not too light that it disappears behind the meat.

fish

Fish is very easy. Stick with white wine, almost any white and you will be quite safe. Of course, there are ‘bigger’ fishes, such as salmon or tuna and then the softer ones like cod or plaice. For the bigger ones, find a chablis ( you can probably tell I like it ) , one that has abit of age to it (perhaps a ’96) so it’s creamy and buttery, otherwise a light red such as a pinot noir is perfect.

With fish, I think it’s a chance to explore the different types of white wines which you haven’t tried before. I think you’ll be surprised with semillons and fish, do give it a try.

Dessert & aperitifs

Oh I love this part, I have a sweet tooth for sweet wines. Now, most restaurants offer pretty robust dessert wine options these days , but if you are searching for a couple of choices, then what you want are muscat grapes. The golden hued french sauternes is rich decadent and tastes of honey. If you want something a little less sweet and less heavy, then go for spanish sweet wines such as Pedro Ximenez. Personally, I would find a formidable German Riesling spatlese, which are late harvest rieslings. They are quite well balanced, smooth & rather light compared to most sweet wines. For something with tastes of nuts & dates, then you can do no wrong with tawny port. Anything 10 years old , or older will do just fine.

On its own, a good book or a long conversation

Am I the only one who unwinds in the evening to a cool glass of sauvignon blanc or a silky and perfumery beaujolais? I love a bottle for long conversations and it’s great way ( well, maybe not the best way ) to fall asleep while settling into a good book. When having wine on it’s own, always go for the lighter bodies ones, so that it’s easier drinking and less dominating. I find that abit of brie always goes well , but do prep a bowl of grapes, it tends to bring out the fruit in the wine and if you are drinking a pinot ( especially new world pinot ) then do have them with strawberries… you will be surprised, believe me.

Part five.

Officially passed the half way mark! In part five, I’m going to focus on getting the most out of ordering wine in a restaurant. See you again in seven day folks.

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Did you manage to put your new tasting skills to good use? Cool, we are about the half-way point in this series and I hope that you’re finding this helpful. If there’s anything you’d like to have included, or have any questions, please do leave a comment at the end of this post, I’ll happily incorporate your needs!

In part three, lets turn our attention to buying those special bottles and a few simple tips to turn your home into the pefect short term wine cellar.

Here’s an index of what is included in this post:

1. Where to buy wine
2. The alcoholic criteria
3. Storing the precious ones

Where to buy wine

There are broadly two ways to access wine, the easiest is t. pop into a wine merchants; the other is to subscribe to a wine club. A wine club is basically a subscription service which will then send you about a dozen hand picked bottles every month. Personally, I prefer going to a shop and picking out a bottle, but if you want to avoid the hassle of having too much choice (trust me, there really is too much out there) , you can leave it to a wine club to make the choices for you.

The five essential london wine shops

You’ve probably already seen my full write-ups on a couple of wine shops in and around London. Apologies to my international readers, although these are some places you might want to visit when you are next in London:

• For the budget concious beginner, Oddbins Chances are you will have seen one of the many Oddbins dotted around London. It is an excellent place for those just starting their adventure into the world of wine and for anyone who is drinking on a budget. Shops are independently run, so expect varying degrees of biasness, but they will all share a passion and knowledge of their selection. Affordable Chilean and South African bottles are good starts, however pay a visit to their fine wine stores in Notting Hill for full effect.

• For the serious wino and deep pockets, Berry Bros & Rudd Primarily purveyors of the very best french varietals, they also carry an excellent selection of other old-world wines, such as German rieslings and some interesting Italian barolos from 2000. Selections fit all kinds of budgets and their shop has largely remained unchanged since it first started selling wine to Londoners some 300 years ago! Staff are passionate and very knowledgeble, you can tell they love their vino. Shopping here is an experience in itself. Definitely a gem in the city.

• For the serious wino in west london, Robersons Their selection of fine Bordeauxs and Burgundies are eye-candy to potential buyers, while they also carry a large cross-section of international wines from Spain, America and Australia. Interesting features include a Lebanese bottle from Chateau Musar which is a must try just based on novelty factor. Fiercely independent, passionate about wine and one of the few places where the bold staff will recommend some exciting bottles to dare you to venture into the unknown. Viva la vino!

• For the wino who wants to try stuff in the shop, the Sampler Here’s how it works. Go to the store, get a pre-paid card and slot it into one of the wine ‘vending machines’ which have between 6 to 8 bottles showcasing a style such as Pinot Noir/Burgundy or Pinot Grigio/Chardonnay. Take a glass and simply press the button for the selection you wish to try. You can spit or swallow and then move to the next machine and repeat the steps all over again. This wine shop has a great concept and is a perfect way for beginners and aficionados alike to enjoy wine.

• For the new world aficionado, Cavas de Gaucho The wine supplying arm of the Gaucho grill franchise has opened it’s wine boutique to the public offering the same selection of over 150 bottles of the best Argentinian it supplies to its restaurant chain. The reds are particularly interesting being characteristically big wines which are fruit driven. Stunning examples of Tempranillos and Malbec are recommended. The wines are fresh, very smooth and goes down well with red meats. The boutique is small, but really it is all about quality.

Some better known wine clubs

There are a few wine clubs which not only offer a subscription service of sorts, but is also a member-based society which sends regular updates too. Here are a few which might interest you:

• The Wine Society Perhaps the world’s largest and oldest wine society, membership allows you to literally join the world’s largest wine fan base, lots of events and all kinds of wine plans catering to differing styles and pocket deepness.

• Stone, Vine and Sun They do a delivery dozen which comes straight to your doorstep starting at £72.50 for the stone case and £100 for the sun case. Mixed and varied, if you don’t know what you want, try this one.

• Berry Bros & Rudd In addition to an excellent wine shop, they also do a cracking wine club as well. Prices are high starting at £120 for their essential reds range and £180 for the Reserve ranges. Well worth it though as they carry all kinds of rarities. If you can afford it, then you definitely need to try this.

The alcoholic criteria

Im not going to attempt to cover all the bases, but when deciding what to buy, there should be a few criteria you need to adhere to while narrowing down the choices:

• Budget Probably the most important ( and obvious ) one. For beginners, always go for the something under a tenner. If you want to push it a little then upgrade to £20, but not much more than that. Of course, you will generally notice increasing quality as you scale up the price range, it’s not across the board, because wine’s abit strange in a sense that sometimes you can get a £5 bottle tasting alot better than one that’s ten times it’s value. So to be on the safe side, trying ten bottles each a fiver ( of all sorts of styles ) is probably a better way to start drinking than taking the plunge with a £50 Latour.

• Style This one is another rather obvious one, I’m going to cover matching food & wine in more detail in part four, but for a quick and fast rule of thumb, if you are going to drink with red meats then go for fleshy reds like a shiraz or a cab sav. If you are going for fish, then any of the whites will do just fine, particularly a nice chablis. If you are going to drink it on its own, then go for something of a lighter & sweeter variety. For a red, try a silky pinot noir, for a white, try a late harvest riesling or even a dessert wine such as a Sauternes.

• Lay or Now This may not be too obvious but wines either drink well now or they need abit of time to mature in a cellar. If you want to buy a bottle for immediate drinking ( ie: within the month ) , then just pop into a shop and get one that’s drinking well. Simple really. Unless there is a particular bottle which I love, I won’t buy bottles to lay down. Purely because of the fact that I don’t have a proper cellar to store the wine such that it can mature properly in a couple years’ time. Which is why I favour shops with good cellars. Though having said that, if its a really good bottle which has been cellared for years in the shop, by the time it’s ready to drink, it could also be several times what it was worth when it first came out. So if you are thinking long-term, then investing in a cellaring system maybe a good idea.

Storing your precious ones

Which leads perfectly into this section.

Now that you’ve bought your bottles, you really want to store it in decent conditions and not risk altering the content of the wine. I appreciate that not everyone has cellaring capabilities ready in their home, so I’m presenting a few easy work around tips which will work just as well in the short term.

The main enemies of wine are light, heat and vibration. When three of these elements combine and change dynamically and rapidly in the environment that your bottles are in, it can lead to pretty disastrous results, so you’d want to be able to understand their effects so that you can control them.

The golden triangle of storing wine

• Light is kept to a minimum, zero light is best, but otherwise, ‘dark’ is fine. UV rays, or just light of any kind will destroy your wine over time.
• Heat or more precisely temperature. This is contentious, though I think it’s widely agreed that 13C is the best temperature to store wine. Too high it’ll go off, too low and you are limiting its chances of maturing properly and if you approach 3C or 4C, then you run the risk of the alcohol freezing and separating out of  the wine. Fluctuations can kill wine as it expands and contracts with the ups and downs in temperature, so a constant temperature landscape is very, very important.
• Vibration. The less the better. In fact, no vibration is the best. Believe it or not, if your bottle is constantly in shock & awe, it will do something really funky to the chemicals in the wine and severely disrupt the balance leading to all kinds of weird flavours. Always ensure that your storage space is free from vibrations.
• Your location in the world. Depending on where you live, the temperature, humidity and all kinds of other factors will come into play as well. Of course, I can’t really cover everything, so do keep in mind your average room temperatures.

Impromptu home wine storage

So you dont have underground space and you can’t be bothered to renovate your basement into a professional class cellar. You just want to make sure the few bottles you bought won’t go off. Here’s a few quick and easy tips for storing your bottles, depending on the length of time it will spend after being bought and then being opened.

• Within the month, which is considered short term, your wine is not really going to change that much, as long as the golden triangle of heat/light/vibration is observed. For wine storage anywhere from a few days up to a month, the fridge is fine ( both for whites & reds ). Temperatures are relatively constant in a fridge and the light ( which is a low lamp ) only comes on when you open it. Provided you don’t open and shut your fridge too often in a day, vibrations will be minimal.

• Up to six months For something stored in the medium term, you’d want somewhere that is more dependable and less accessible so you give the wine ample peace and quiet to ‘sleep’. If you have a storage room which is dusty and murky, look for the lowest spot and lay your wine down horizontally. Ensure that once it’s layed down (sleeping), you don’t wake it until you are absolutely sure you want to drink it. Wine that is layed doesn’t like to wake up unless if it’s for drinking. If you don’t have a storage room, then you can tuck your wine away comfortably in a cupboard which you’re not going to access to often. Temperatures are usually around 15C in a cupboard I reckon, but then again, this depends on your room temperature, so do make sure your house isn’t too warm. Otherwise, a cupboard is dark, vibration will be low and temperatures are constant. It’s perfect for the medium term.

• Six months to infinity If you want to store wine in the long term, ie: years, then cupboards and fridges aren’t going to cut it. You need a storage area that meets the criteria for storing wine and be sure that the environment stays consistent over the entire period. Thankfully these days, there are a multitude of specialised wine storage fridges on sale which feature tinted glass doors which cut out harmful UV lights and are able to consistently maintain a constant and at the correct temperature. I’m not going to recommend any brands but shop around for these wine coolers, for example. OK, these ones are actually quite expensive, but think about it, if you have hundreds of pounds worth of wine which you expect to become ethereal over the years, it would be a lot of wasted time if the wine cooler doesn’t do it’s job correctly. Get a really good wine cooler or don’t get one at all.

In the next post

Phew, so hopefully you found that useful. Buying & storing are two essential steps in the preserving the overall experience. In the following post, we’re going to talk about matching food and wine. A big topic in itself, I’ll try my best to keep things interesting of course!

See you in seven.

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I love visiting wine shops, most feature these cool and creaky wooden floors. A little musky and dusty, in London the shopkeepers are almost always very cheerful and friendly. I mean, you got to be if your job is to sell not just a drink, but an experience to your customer.

Established since 1698

Primarily purveyors of very fine french varietals, you will also find that they carry a nice port & whisky collection. In addition, their other Old-world and European selections are also quite formidable.

Before I get to their wines, I want to talk about the shop itself, it’s really atmospheric. The inside is rather small, and it doesnt feel like a wine shop at all, as most of the bottles seem to be hidden away. As you stroll in, it’s like walking into 17th century London.

The staff are all very well dressed in smart suits, but exude a friendly glow and make you feel surprisingly relaxed and comfortable. Being that BBR are in the very posh end of Mayfair, I was half-expecting an epic showing of the stiff upper lip coupled with famously snotty service… but none of that here. The shop may look 17th century, but the staff certainly have moved on with the times. They are helpful, warm and most important of all, know their wines.

Literally, they are like walking wine encyclopedias.

I’m quite amazed at how much they know; it was here that I learnt that German rieslings (mostly from the Mosel region) come in 3 different varieties which are characteristically either dry, medium-sweet or very sweet. This has something to do with the time of harvest and the amount of sugars present in the wines during vinification. The person serving me was really clued-in. Best of all, they sell the different types of Rieslings in the shop. Rest assured it’s on my list so look forward to my riesling review and comparison post sometime in the near future.

Selection of wines

These guys have been around for a long time, and this translates into reputation and connections. I will note that the store features a cellar in the basement ( a real plus if you are a fine wine afficianado) , so you can be assured of well-layed wines which are undamaged by the harsh vibrations & light from the shop floor.

While predominantly french, I was recommended a nice looking 2000 italian barolo by G.Mascarello, costing £40. Bit on the pricy side, but I trust the professionalism and feel really confident its a great bottle.

My parents are in town next week, so I’ll post a review up soon… with a little assistance from the man who gave life to the man who gave life to London Eater. (intentionally intended.)

I suppose you’d expect prices to be sky high here, but it’s not the case at all. The shop features very nice wines that fit all kinds of budgets. They also managed to get a few smaller vineyards to brand their wines under the BBR banner. Although I’ve not tried it yet, they do feature Burgundies at X price. here.

I’m a stickier for rarity. I was on the look out for an upbeat and crisp bottle of white, but with a bit of creaminess, basically something a little refreshing and challenged the staff to recommend me a bottle that would fit the description under £20.

She started with some petit chablis, but then suggested this bottle, a 2003 Vouvray by Dorleans which is apparently a very small area and run limited produce. It costs a meagre £10.50.

This bottle was very sturdy, really crisp and clean in taste, but carried a hint of creaminess too. No oak whatsoever. The other thing I noticed was how lively the wine was, like it was freshly bottled and had a very light natural fizz in the finish. The livelyness really surprised me. Amazing for the price, it tastes as good as any £30 Chablis grand cru.

If you are searching for the best (and the rarest) french wines, this is the place to go, as far as London is concerned. The one thing that you will find lacking is their selection of new world wines. I was in the market for a jammy californian pinot, but the closest they could offer were pinots from Marbororugh NZ, and even that came relunctantly recommended.

Tasting the juice and eating the wine

In addition to the excellent shop, they also hold events (tasters and dinners) down in their atmospheric cellar. I wasn’t allowed to venture down there, but check it out here. Some of the events are very reasonable, like these one, which features full tasting events starting from £65.

Ok, £65 is not exactly cheap, but relative to other stuff out there, I’d much rather do it in a 17th century cellar with walking encyclopedias than a rented ‘seminar room’ in some dodgy office block in canary wharf.

I’m looking to sign up for some events here, but if anyone of you are interested in joining me, be sure you let me know (leave a comment below).

Next to the wine society, these guys probably boasts, in my opinion, the best selection of wine in the UK. Not only do they carry the best of the best, its also the more rare French wines that nobody really heard of that caught my eye.

Wines here suit all kinds of budgets, not having to suffer in quality and a top-notch cellar that preserves and stores wines correctly. Coupled with a knowlegeable staff whose recommendations will fit exactly what you want, you can be assured that all the bottles you buy from BBR will be great. Really worth a visit.

Welcome back folks. Last week we talked about what the different grape varietals were and their fundamental characteristics. Did you try the Diablo Pinot or the Dr Loosen Riesling? If not, maybe I didnt entice you quite enough, if you did, then well done on you!

Ok, in this edition, its all about understanding your bottles. We’ll start with the physical appearances and then move inwards and give you the basic tools to help you understand what wine really is. By the end of this post, you should be well equipped to confidently narrow down what you want and start enjoying it properly. Remember now, wine is not about getting drunk or about what other people say is good, its all about you and what you think is good. 

Here’s what’s covered in this post:

1. Gear you might need
2. What the labels mean
3. Prepping the bottle
4. Prepping the nibbles
5. Look, Sniff, Smell & Taste
6. After Taste
7. One last thing…

Gear you might need

Lets get started with some basic stuff you might need. If you’re going to take wine abit more seriously, then its worth consider some simple gear to keep around the house:

• Waiter’s Corkscrews 

I swear by the waiter ones, they are compact, cheap and never fail. I don’t really believe in the 100 quid fancy bottle openers which need a 30 page manual to operate. This one from Amazon is available for £7.50 and will do just fine. Its a nice way of wowing your friends when you open a bottle with one of them. 

• Nice glasses & a decent decanter
  Cheap ones break easily so you’ll want to get something a little more resilient. Wine glasses come in all shapes and sizes these days (some even without a stem), so you’re spoilt for choice. I get mine at Berry Bros & Rudd or the Sampler they do some very nice glasses, do check it out.    

• Wine savers 

Again you can either spend a fortune, or you can get really cheap ones from Amazon here, two for £4. These are useful, especially when you can’t finish a bottle in one go.

What the labels mean
So now, you’re in your local wine shop and you’re searching for a bottle, but you’re not sure what the labels really mean. There’s really only a few things you need to pay attention to:

The front label

There’s normally quite alot written on the front labels.

Like the ones above for instance (a sample of what I keep in my cupboards..). Generally speaking all you really need to know is producer, vintage year and grape varietal.

However below is a more in-depth look at what it all means:

• Chateau XYZ

Name of the vineyard or winemaker, sometimes if it’s a big name like Louis Latour, you’d just see his name. 

• Burgundy, Beaune, Margaux, Douro 

The region in which it was produced, also an indication of the grape varietal (see part 1 for more) 

• Vintage year

A vintage year normally means that the wine is made from grapes picked from a single year and a single vineyard. So think of vintage wine as being pure. Non-vintage is the opposite, its blended with different grapes varietals from either other vintages or from other vineyards altogether. Wine critics usually test vintages every year and publish their results in the form of a vintage chart. The chart gives an indication of how good all the wines from a specific region is, in that year.

The above image is an extract from the wine society website (which i recommend checking out by clicking this). Its quite self explanatory really, white box means its good to drink now (ie: smooth, no stickiness) and red box means store in cellar (ie: wine is not ‘ripe’ yet, very sticky if you drink it now as opposed to a few years from now)

Generally speaking, you can use the vintage chart to give an indication of the overall standard of all the wines in that year. Most shops have their own vintage charts too, so if you are buying a bottle of wine, do keep in mind to check the vintage chart before you commit a purchase.

• Grading *this applies to French wine*

French wine is regulated and the quality control method is called ‘Appellation d’Origne Controlee’ (AOC) .

Though, in my opinion, its a pretty loose quality control system since a lower grade wine can sometimes taste as good as something several grades up. The following is generally how it works:

VIns de table/Vins de Pay

Blended wines in which the grapes used as well as the production methods are a little murky. Basically this is your run of the mill table wine (or house wine). Typically the cheapest stuff.

AOC

This means that the wine you are buying adheres to a specific set of quality control measures such as throwing away 5% of the lousiest harvest, or controlling the purity of grape varietal used (ie, less blended with other grapes). This is the basic level of french wine.

Further AOC classifications

Within the AOC grading, there are the exceptional grades. Depending on region, it’s worded slightly differently. But generally speaking, if you see the word ‘Grand Vin de XXX’ it normally means that the wine is the made from the best 5% of the grapes from a single year. This is further divided into the ‘Premier Cru’ and the ‘Grand Cru‘, with ‘Grand cru’ being the ultimate distinction.

However, it should be noted that while grand crus are generally more expensive than premier crus, it does not neccesarily mean that it is better. It’s just an indication of the ‘potential‘ that it could be better. Confusing? Yeah well, welcome to the wacky world of wine.

For the layman, if you get a bottle which is either a premier or a grand cru coming from a good vintage year and is from a star producer (and quite possibly a hefty price tag), then you can be assured that it is of some sort of quality. 

The back label

Not all wines necessarily have a back label, especially the more reputable ones. The ones that do, mostly carry an informative tasting note, which is helpful in describing what it takes like, but not necessarily if it’s actually good or not, and also the alcohol content. To me, this is really quite an arbitrary figure, but just in case you need to know, wines are typically in the region of 12.5% to 14.5%.

Prep the bottle

Most people tend to skip this step, but I think that this is probably the most important step to getting the most out of your wine. This is the funky aspect of wine: it’s a ‘live‘ drink. It’s taste actually changes with the way you treat it. The reason being that the chemicals inside wine changes quite distinctively with changing conditions. Below are just a few things you should do after you pop the cork:

• Temperature 

This is crucial, warm-ish temperature brings out the fleshiness and the flavours, and cold-ish will stifle the flavours leading to crisper, cleaner palette. It’s also the same reason why cold lager taste good and when warm it sucks. For Reds, ideally 15 – 18 C, but room temperature is fine, as reds tend to carry more distinctively creamy, chocolatey flavours, its better served at room temperature. For whites, stick it in the fridge for at least 6 hours to get it down to about 12 – 15 C, or until it’s nice, cold and steely, brrr.   

• Decanting 

When drinking a red, it’s always good to decant it properly. Decanting can help ‘mini-age’ a red to remove any horrible tannins and make for a smoother drinking experience. This is otherwise known as letting the wine ‘breathe‘. Reds of all budgets can benefit from this step.

Here’s how you do it: 

Slowly trickle the wine it into your decanter, making sure you give each drop of wine, enough time to breathe some air and not chuck the whole bottle in, otherwise that just negates the whole process. The reason for doing so, is such that you give each and every drop as much contact time with air as possible, giving it maximum chance of oxidising.

After that, rest it for one hour (ie: open your bottle at least an hour before you want to drink it). And you should be good to go.

If you don’t have a decanter or can’t be bothered, just leave the bottle (with the cork off) for an hour before drinking it. You can also do a quick comparison by taking a sip the moment you open it and then trying it again in an hour, let me know if you notice any differences.

• Get an ice bucket 

Whites don’t really need time to breathe, but they do need to stay cooler than usual. Purists will tell you that if you drink your wine straight out of the fridge, then you are drinking it too cold, personally I think there is some truth to this, you don’t want your white to be too cold, but don’t let it warm up to room temperature, so as long as it’s ‘cool’ then it’s fine.

• Corking

This is a pretty rare occurrence (I’ve only ever experienced it once), but you’ll notice it right away, because the wine will just smell really horrible, like somethings gone off. If you feel like you’re drinking something that really tastes weird (ie: too sour or just bad smelling), you are more than welcome to send it back (if its a restaurant) or return it to the shop, merchants are more than happy to deal with this issue. 

Prep some nibbles

If you are going to have your wine with food, then you can skip this step completely (there will be a separate post about pairing wine with food in part 4) . However, if you are tasting wine on its own, then its a good idea to pair it with some nibbles to enhance the experience:

• Ham

If your budget stretches, get some fine spanish iberico ham from selfridges, they are sweet & nutty, really tasty. Otherwise, your local sainsbury should do some very nice italian parma hams (min 18month aged if possible) for a tenth of the price.

• Strawberries, rasberries, blueberries, all berries

I tend to find that most reds will have flavours complementing any one the red fruits. Helps in identifying the actual flavours in the wine itself too.

• Apples, Grapes & Honeydew Melon

These go hand in hand with good italian or spanish ham.

• Get a good Baguette

Surprisingly, bread, especially french baguette go well with wine. If you are a first timer and find the alcohol taste too strong, then a little bit of baguette can actually help smooth that out.

• Cheese & Crackers

Ah yes, how can i forget this classic combo. I prefer soft cheeses, like brie or camembert, but if you are a hard cheese kinda person, gouda is interesting and you will be surprised by Parmigiano-Reggiano (or parmesan), not the grated kind, but the real thing, hand carved so you can get nice big chunks. 

• My nibble plate

I put together a quick nibble plate of red grapes, strawberries ( ok they’re not really in season..) , parmigiano reggiano, brie, some bagguette and lovely parma ham wrapped with rocket. All from sainsbury’s for low, low prices. 

What are you actually tasting?

You’ve got everything setup and now you want to start drinking. Surely you’ve seen people swirl their glass, stick their nose in and then blurp something about hints of this and that after they took a sip. So, what are they actually doing? Here is the short version:

1. Look for colour
2. Smell the aromas
3. Swirl your glass
4. Taste it while sucking in air
5. repeat

Keep reading for the long(er) version.

Look for Colour

Pour yourself a nice glass about and fill about 1/3 of the glass. Don’t fill it up, because the next thing you will be doing is to swirl the glass.

But first, take the time to look at the colour of the wine. Is it a really dark purplish red? Or is it a velvety soft translucent, almost pink colour? If it’s white, then is it a golden hue colour? Or a washed-out cream colour? You’ll be surprised at the many variations of colour wine can have. 

Look for the subtle details, trust me once you start noticing these little aspects, it’ll help you appreciate it more.   

Swirl

Now time to swirl that wine. Don’t be shy, swirl hard, but gently, don’t spill it all over. This is essentially an extension of the decanting philosophy of letting the wine breathe. How to swirl you might ask? Hold the glass by the stem, push it down against the table, and then give it a good 10 or 20 swirls. Weee..

Smell

Once the wine has taken in much needed oxygen, it should help bring out all the aromas and let the wine wake up. Now don’t be shy, stick your nose right down into the glass. Seriously, don’t be shy, it’s why wine glasses are shaped the way they are. The fat bit is so you don’t spill the wine all over the place when swirling, and the narrow bits is for your nose to capture all the aromas.

Breathe in everything, close your eyes if you wish, concentrate and then try to idenfity the different smells you detect. If you can, try and identify them with what you think it might be (ie: floral, peachy, lemony, vanilla ..etc). You might find it abit difficult to tell at first, but just make sure you still your nose in for a good minute or two and let the aromas take over. Take the time, It’ll come to you, really it will.

Taste 

Time for your first sip, and I do mean sip it. Let the wine flood your mouth and slowly coat all areas of your tongue, so all your tastebuds come in contact with it. What do you taste? Can you describe the flavours? Is it flowery? Peppery? Berries? Plums? Chocolate? Can’t taste anything? No worries, take the time, the flavours will come, you just need to be patient.

Getting bored? Then try this, you can further oxidise the wine but taking in more air with the sip in in your mouth.

Here’s what you do:

1. Roll your tongue up such that you are cupping the wine on your tongue
2. Open your mouth just enough and start sucking in air
3. While sucking in air, make sure your tongue is still balancing the wine on your cupped tongue
4. Practice until dribbling stops 

Confusing? The best way to describe this is just to watch someone do it. Gary Vaynerchunk runs an excellent video blog called wine library tv where he tastes bottles daily. By the way, I’m a Vayniac.

This is the link to his latest episode and he’s tasting burgundies from the calssic 2005 vintage. Ok so all the time the wine has been spending on your tongue, you should have also been registering all kinds of flavours. Take your time to understand what each of the flavours are. It’s fun!

After taste

If you have a spitum, then you can spit it out if you wish, but I normally scoff everything I drink.

If you are having trouble identifying the flavours, then check out vinography.com’s aroma card. They explain taste and flavours far better than I possibly can, also gives you a more detailed explaination of what to look for. They also provide an aroma card with all the different types of flavours you might come across.  

Keep in mind these four simple steps to wine tasting, and before you know it, you’ll be an expert yourself.

The more wines you taste and the more you take time to understand the aromas and flavour profiles, the more you’ll find out about your own palette and what you prefer. So the next time you are picking up a bottle of wine, you should be better equipped to pick up something that will suit your tastes.

(ie: I like lighter wines, vannila and strawberry flavours, silky texture and smooth, no oak because I hate it, oh and something that is drinking well now… and under a tenner if possible)

One last thing..  

Wine lasts about three days in the fridge before it goes flat. With wine savers, maybe a week before it goes off, so do keep that in mind whenever you open a bottle. The general rule of thumb is just to finish it when you open one, if its a bottle that is high in tannins, then the wine tends to smooth out after 24 hours. 

Anything kept over 3 days will start to lose it’s flavour rapidly.

Coming in part three

Ok that’s part two guys, hopefully, now you’ll have a basic idea of how to understand your bottle and the fundamentals of tasting wine. Next week, we look at some places to get nice bottles, how to buy them and how to store them properly, see you in seven!

Love wine? Me too, now let’s talk about it, all about it and from the very beginning.

Here’s a little index of what’s covered in this post:

1. A brief exposition
2. Wine is good for you
3. Everybody loves somebody else
4. Old World vs New World
5. Red Grape Varietals
6. White Grape Varietals

A brief exposition

Wine is made by fermenting the juices from crushed grapes. Yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and they continue to work its magic well after it has been bottled, making wine truly ‘alive’. There are a complex set of chemicals that interact with one another to give the nice and sometimes not so nice flavours. When it works, its stunning, but when it fails its amazingly horrible. We’ve been making wine for nearly 8000 years, with the earliest records dating back to ancient Israel. All that rich history and culture is distilled into what we call wine.

Wine is good for you  

It has been said that the French know their wine, and they live longer for it. Red wine contain many goodies such as poly-phenols and anti-oxidants which help lower the risk of cancer and heart diseases. Generally, drinking small amounts of alcohol before you eat will help prep your digestive system. However, too much alcohol will fry your liver and kill you. Ok, my apologies, kill is a pretty strong word but its definitely unhealthy to be donning any form of alcoholic goggles on a consistent basis. You know who you are, don’t over do it… too often.

Old world vs New world  

 Wine is grown on pretty much every continent these days, well except maybe the Antarctica. They can be classed as coming from two main ‘regions’ if you will: Old world and New World. Or, retro and new funk in my vernacular. ‘Old world wine’ usually refers to the established wine nations in Europe, in which the individual regions in those countries have come to define the traditional styles of wine. So stuff like Bordeaux in France, Douro from Portugal, Rioja from Spain are considered retro. Although when people mention old world, they are usually talking about French wine. These oldies tend to name their wines after the regions they are grown in.

So Burgundy is actually (well, usually) Pinot Noir grapes grown in Burgundy, France. They tend to be more disciplined in approach, more subtle, not ‘loud’, more mineral, you can almost taste the soil where the grapes were grown in. That kind of old, musky, dusty. Just retro. Everything else can almost universally be classified as New World, with certain exceptions of course.   New world includes Chilean, Australian, Californian and South African.

Wines from these countries tend to be cheaper, as they are newer, sometimes it is also due to newer wine production technologies but generally speaking, new world wines break away from the rigid conservatism of old world wines. They also tend to give their wines cooler names instead of adhering to traditional nomenclature. New funk wines are fruitier, more colourful, louder, weirder, daring, sweeter, everything just feels more amped up you know, its like Jay-Z versus Elvis. Funk v Jazz. Both have their strong points, and both are a matter of personal choice.

Everybody loves somebody else

So how do we judge what’s good and whats not? The ‘correct’ answer is Robert Parker. He’s like god as far as wine is concerned. His famous 100-point system can literally make or break vineyards. But, the real answer: You are the best judge of wine. Yes YOU.

Everybody’s palette is different, everybody tastes different things because we’ve all got different taste buds, so something like pinot noir, which is a lighter style might be heaven to me, but to you it might taste like watered down grape juice. My advice to tasting great wine : Try everything.

Thats key.

When I first started I was pretty shy about drinking and wanted to read more about it before taking the plunge. Be daring. Try everything. Only then will you truly know what wine is. Don’t ignore the critics completely, but approach their reviews with a pinch of salt. Tune into to the keywords they use and try the ones that ‘sound’ like it ticks most things on your list. Now, you wouldnt really know what’s on your list till you’ve gone out there and tried the different styles.

Now, you might be wondering what to buy or try first or how much all this is going to set you back. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a basic list of things to look for in Part two. Hang back for that. For now, its worth understanding the different grape varietals that make up most wines.

Major Grape Varietals

I’m not going to go into every single one because there’s simply too many of them. Different breeds grow in different places around the world and some are cross bred too. So I’m just going to mention the important ones. If you don’t already know, wine comes in white, red, rose and sparkling. Different grapes grow better or worse in different parts of the world and produce huge variations of styles. It’s the main reason why different bottles of wine taste so different. However, each grape has fundamental flavour profiles and this is just a brief overview of major grape varietals you will likely come across.

Let’s start with the Reds:

• Cabernet Sauvignon

• Pinot Noir

• Shiraz/Syrah

Full-bodied, high in alcohol content and a big wine. Dark chocolates and black pepper with plums, everything is larger than life. As you can probably imagine, having amped up flavours also means amped up wines. Shiraz are muscular wines and have been made popular by some great Australian examples. The sun down under compliments this style. And by far, the most famous of the Australian shiraz’s are the Penfolds Grange. Most of the vintages are awesome and they tend to hover around £120. That’s a pretty good price for something that is considered spectacular in its own class.

• Merlot

Ok, one of the things you will find in wine drinkers are that they are a horribly biased bunch. Take me for example. Personally I hate merlot.

It tastes of berries and plums, its light but at the same time its kind of muscular. But generally, I think the palette is just hollow, it just feels like someone cut a big hole in the middle of the wine and just took out all the important middle bits. Merlots are tannic, ie, it’s got a sticky after taste. That’s why you’ll mostly find merlots blended with something with more body like cab sav. You might enjoy it, but personally, I avoid it like the plague.

• Malbec

The steak wine. This is a famous grape in Argentina and they produce wines which are characteristically smooth, very fruit driven and are easy to drink. Medium bodied, however, the flavours are robust enough to compliment overpowering beefiness. I would say Malbec falls between a Cab Sav and a Shiraz.

• Tempranillo

Primarily used in Spanish Riojas, they are also made famous by great Argentinian examples. I think this varietal will give people the correct impression of red wine. Tempranillos are fresh with nice round flavours of berries, plums and vanilla. It carries that fruity, sweet component. Nice.

Now, lets take a look at the whites:

• Chardonnay

This is probably a pretty widespread version of white wine. Personally, I like chardonnay, especially French Chablis. It’s bright, fresh and so crisp it can cut through a mirror. Good Chablis can also be buttery & creamy which is wonderful.

However, some new world chardonnay tend to be over oaked. Oak is that disgusting smoky flavour you get with some wines. I hate oak. I think oaking should be kept to a minimum in wine, I mean, its like the makers threw cigarette buds in while they were making the wine.

That’s why its become a trend for vineyards to release unoaked chardonnays, which tend to be bright, clean and lively.

• Riesling

This is a white varietal everybody must try. Rieslings are largely grown in  Mosel, Germany and Alsace, France. My personal opinion, pick up a German Riesling and forget the Alsatians. German Rieslings are regarded as one of the best whites in the world. Depending on the harvesting time, it can produce a dry-version, which is very clean in taste, but has a bright bouquet of flowers and juicy fruits. Its high acidity gives the wine a nice sizzle.

Then there are the sweeter riesling variants, which have a wetter-body that coats your mouth. It is like drinking light cream, minimal sparkles, apples, pears, and sweet juicy fruits. It’s a really nice wine to have on its own on a summer days.    

• Sauvignon Blanc

Most whites are very clean anyway, but sav blanc is just really clean. It’s palette is like a whiteboard. It’s very mineral and lemony in flavour. Its almost too innocent. You can easily have this with food that has direct and very clean tastes. Like grilled fish or chicken. Good for summer too.

• Semillon

Semillon is like a Chablis but after having a shower and doused with lots of clean bright fruit. You get some nice unoaked australian semillons that remind you of the sun. This is a nice wine to have for summer.

• Pinot Grigio 

I want to talk about the Italian Pinot Grigios because they are lovely. They are crispy and acidic and impart a natural sparkle. Grigio tends to be lighter in body, sweeter and just an easy wine to understand.

Whats Next 

Phew, so that’s a brief overview of some of the more common grapes you will likely come across. Now that you have a basic flavour of what to expect, you are probably ready to start tasting some wine now. Here’s a couple of suggestions to start with:

RED: Cassilero del Diablo Pinot Noir 2006 £6.99 oddbins 

It’s a lighter style, so its easy to start with. Tastes of ripe strawberries and carries a slightly sweet edge. Try this with actual strawberries and some warm baguette.

WHITE: Dr Loose Riesling 2006 £7.49 oddbins

It’s wet, rich aromas of flower and bright fruit, acidic and it sizzles with nicely sweet fruits of pears, apples and oranges. Its a great example of the venerable riesling grape.

Hope you enjoyed this, next week in part 2, I’m going to tell you abit about how to read and understand wine labels, identify your palette, show you how to sniff & scoff, how to store wine properly and also some gear you’ll need to get started.

See you in 7 days guys!

A very interesting concept that is the first ever to be implemented in this country. Yes, you are looking at the concept right now. The little metal tubes sticking out from the top of the machine are where your glass goes for a ‘sip‘.

So here’s how it works:

1. Get a pre-paid card (in-store) and top up with cash. 
2. Go to one of the machines, each focusing on a style or region (featuring a total of 80 wines at any one time) and make your selection.
3. Press for either one sip, a double sip or a triple sip. Each ‘sip’ is roughly a shot glass, or 25ml.
4. Sniff, swirl, whirl.
5. Spit or swallow.
6. Repeat again and again until pre-paid card is empty.

The Sampler is located in the Angel/Islington area of North London. The high street is rather eclectic and almost feels as if you’re in a suburb in Sydney, especially on a sunny summers day. This shop is a really nice visit in itself. Run by a charming couple and their shop dog, Ivy (whom you can kind of make out in the picture). 

Talking vending machines

Wine is a high maintenance baby. It doesn’t travel well, doesn’t like temperature extremes and deteriorates as it gets exposed to air. That’s why wine shops can’t just store opened bottles in the fridge, it’ll just go off after about 3 days.

 Except when some genius invented a way to keep lots of opened bottles from oxidation and preserve them for up to 3 weeks. I didn’t look up who invented this technology, but I think it’s originated from Europe (our euro cousins are sharper winos than we are). All this means is that there are 80 wines on hand for me to savour.

Forgive me for all the slanted images, obviously I was feeling a little worse for wear while doing this write-up. 

What did you drink Kang?

I topped up my card to 20 pounds and tried as much as I could! This is like wine tasting taken to the max, I feel like a wine-child in a candy shop. I counted 8 machines in the shop, each featuring a region or a style. So I stick my card into the machine, the prices for 1 sip shows up at the top of each wine. The prices are all very reasonable. For a bottle costing around 15 quid, a sip is only about 50p. Obviously for more expensive bottles, the prices go up accordingly.

The most expensive bottle was a ‘96 Rothschild that costs a cool £780. A sip, however, weights in a hefty 38 quid. That’s not bad really. If you’ve always wanted to know what people with super deep pockets drink, then that experience can be had for significantly less.

Ok, so as expected, some wines are awesome, some are so-so and others are just bad. The best one in the shop in my opinion, was the Meulenhof 2002 Riesling Spatlese.

It was sweet, as Rieslings usually are, really fruity and carries a natural fizz to it. Tastes of lychees, honey and sweet apples and just very nicely balanced flavours. Not too sweet but not too dry. At 18 quid a bottle, superb.

The most expensive sip I had costed me a fiver. It was a ‘97 ‘Le Meal’ Ermitage by M.Chapoutier. The bottle costs £110.

 Super smooth and very peaceful going down. It’s a dry palate, very clean and pure. However, this white is big and creamy, like a well-aged champagne and has fruity elements to it too. It’s a good match with thai food and will stand up to big flavours. I suppose one should expect no less from a bottle that costs over a hundred quid.

Wine on an oyster

They also had a £200 bottle of 1983 Penfolds Grange, I really wanted to try it (about £10 per sip) but by the time I’d a few sips in, I was out of cash on my card already. I resisted topping up, because if I did, I would just keep trying stuff till my bank broke.

By the time I left the store, I was a really happy man. It’s really such an interesting shop to visit and I recommend it anyone to try it. There are lots of nice bottles featured on the machines and you basically try everything until you find one that really catches your palette. Great idea and really nice little activity to fill up those lazy sunday afternoons. 

In addition to their excellent shop, they also hold various wine tasting events throughout the year. If you are catching this on Sunday (27th Sept), then do check it out today as they are doing a free Bordeaux tasting from 1pm to 6pm plus discounts on the bottles being featured. No need to book so just show up and taste great stuff.

One final thing I forgot to mention, at the end of the session, my mouth was just alive with all kinds of fruity flavours and after-fizz from all the different wines. Sensational.  

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