…at weddings

Tags

bank holiday, hotel, pinot gris, spritzer, weddings, weekend, white wine, wine

First bank holiday weekend of the year (was it? Feels like it was, and I can’t be bothered to check the calendar), first wedding of the year that wasn’t my own, and in fact first wedding at all since my own. This was then followed by another wedding 3 days later but that’s too many weddings for one post, so lets just concentrate on the first.

A genuine English country affair, with quaint village church where the bride grew up then reception in the lovely Walton Hall.There was of course champagne, which is the only drink of which I have a picture.

And later, after some Bordeaux with dinner, there were many many white wine spritzers. This has, much to my ongoing surprise, become my default drink of choice when I’m going to be surrounded by booze for many hours. Even in my newly moderate state, it’s completely unrealistic to think that I’m going to be able to spend the majority of a long, well-catered wedding or party without a drink in my hand, if only through force of habit. I’m very good at drinking water in-between drinks but tend to neck it and find myself irritatingly quickly with a proper glass back in my hand.

It’s easy to justify a spritzer with the vast majority of wine served in pubs and bars. There was a very decent Chilean oaky chardonnay served with the wedding dinner which didn’t work at all due to it having some taste and character, but luckily the hotel bar had a much blander pouring wine which actually tasted alright spritzed down with soda. So, a fantastic evening and not too much of a hideous head the next day, no thanks to the very polite and over-generous barman who I spotted, around 2 hours into the evening reception, working on a 96% wine, 4% soda ratio.

We took maybe the best decision ever and went for a second night at the hotel which meant we could spend the day after the wedding relaxing and enjoying the grounds, rather than dragging our hungover selves and over-stuffed suitcases back to London. The only eating option was the hotel restaurant – unfortunately over-priced and over-ambitious, but it did feature a really friendly and personable waitress, and a pretty tasty bottle of Adelaide Hills Pinot Gris. This is a pretty interesting choice to find on any list, and was a great choice with a range of dishes – fresh enough to match a gorgeously sunny evening (this was after all the Bank Holiday Of Sun) but had a tiny touch of spice or savouriness on the finish.

A post of facts rather than analysis or insight, but you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not feeling terribly inspired tonight. Also, Nashville is just starting, and there is very little that can keep me away from close harmony, cowboy boots and high drama.

…the best kind of rosé

Tags

charles melton, drinking, food, rose wine, tasting, wine

My distinctly mediocre attempts at drinks styling.

I don’t like writing wine-speak. I love nothing more than totally falling for a wine but the resulting language that I have to use in order to describe it doesn’t always come easy. This happened on Friday night with a bottle of Charles Melton Rosé. As you know, due to recent health conspiracies, the occasions on which I’ve opened and relished a whole bottle at home have become considerably rarer, so perhaps I’m still in the stage of puppy-like excitement.  Whatever the excuse, I went into rhapsodies, This wine is just SO…so….damn seductive; for want of a much better phrase, it had me at hello.

I hate sexual or gender imagery around wines – at best it’s crass and simplistic, at worst meaningless and reductive. What I mean by seductive is the experience of smelling a wine and being mentally and physically drawn in to the glass, immediately wanting to know and experience more. To me, the Rose of Virginia is the epitome of this. So deep in colour and rich in aroma, it intrigues on even the most straightforward level.

It’s rare that I actually make any notes on wines – I really mean to in my job but they just get lost in piles of emails and paperwork, and have just never been the kind of person or wine drinker to do it in my spare time. So it stands out when I do, and I did on Friday. I can therefore report that I got blueberries along with strawberries and cream on the nose; that the palate was lifted, juicy, with raspberries, blueberries and fresh acidity; that my final note was “Amazingly seductive wine, vibrant but serious. Just perfect.”.

But I’m not sure this really rings true for this blog – I’d much rather tell you how you should re-consider your thoughts on rosé wine, how it’s not all either over-sweet Californian Zinfandel or delicate petal-pink Provence. This style, and while this may be a world-class example there are several reminiscent wines to be found, is to be relished, to be enjoyed with food if possible (we had it with a spicy, grilled still-pink rack of lamb) and savoured. Don’t take my word for it, try a glass and see if it can work its magic – it will do a much better job than I will of convincing you.

I’ve found it to buy in a couple of places online :

http://www.thefinewinecompany.co.uk/charles-melton-rose-of-virginia-2012-18434.html

http://www.oldbridgewine.co.uk/product.php?shopvarid=180

I was so struck by the colours of the label design the morning after, but I’m not sure it really comes out. Either way, the pattern represents the beautiful landscape of the Barossa.

My kind of drinks writing

Tags

booze, break-ups, drinking, link, the hairpin, wine

My kind of drinks writing

…in the sunshine

Tags

bitters, cafe, coffee, east dulwich, granola, orangina, soft drinks, summer

There is pretty much no drink that doesn’t taste better drunk outside in the sunshine. Apart from perhaps peaty single malt. And hot chocolate. And other drinks intended specifically to warm you up.

Other than those very particular kind of drinks, there is pretty much no drink that doesn’t taste better drunk outside in the sunshine and, having apparently emerged from The Depths of Eternal Winter, London has been the perfect place to try this out.

Two soft drinks to test the theory:

Exhibit A: sparkling water with a dash of bitters and a squeeze/slice of orange drunk outside in our Tiny Garden (would make a joke here about how that’s the disappointing Elton John follow-up single, but I already made it once this week and it really wasn’t even that funny the first time). I think it was the drinks writer Fiona Beckett who came up with the fantastic recommendation of bitters and sparkling water as a good non-alcoholic drink. Not technically alcohol-free, but as it’s only a few splashes of bitters in quite a large glass, it’s as good as, and is a decidedly adult alternative to sweet and sickly soft drinks. It tastes 100% of holidays, being somewhere between Orangina, the taste of childhood trips to France, and a Negroni, the defining flavour of the last few summers. And indeed winters.

Exhibit B: a latte in a ridiculous glass outside a café in East Dulwich. I hate these glasses. I have no idea who has ever been made happier by their coffee being served in one. Are they meant to be ‘special’ and celebratory? They make me feel like I’m about to be charged £6.95 for a disappointing piece of ‘gateau’ in a faux-continental café somewhere off Leicester Square. And they’re weighted completely wrong so if the drink’s actually hot, the glass hangs awkwardly against your hand and scorches your knuckles. Useless. Also, I think the cafe is called Vintage Pretty which is unforgivable on just about every level. That said, the coffee was actually pretty good, as was the family-size bowl of granola and yoghurt that I had with it, and it was a gorgeous, sun-filled start to the day.

…small but perfectly formed glasses

Tags

10 Greek Street, drinking, small glass, trebbiano, verdelho, vinoteca, wine

So, a couple of weeks back into the drinking and I’m pleased to report that you don’t find me face down in a vat of Pinot Grigio. I think a party on Saturday night was the first time in about two months I’ve been actually A Bit Drunk, which turned me into some kind of rookie teenage drinker, shouting ‘God I’m SO DRUNK’ every five minutes which was a hugely attractive quality.

Apart from that riot of excess (aka a few white wine spritzers. Yes really, don’t hold it against me – the wine was not good and I’m still such a light-weight that if they’d been actual wine, bad things would have happened) the rest has continued few, fine, and relatively far-between.

 

This was a bottle that we produce from one of our favourite Australian producers for some of the supermarkets – you can buy it here from Tesco or in-store. It’s delicious – fruity, clean and perfectly balanced, a great example of cooler climate Pinot Noir. The picture above also shows the results of a ruinous trip to Whole Foods on the way back from town. May I say that I managed to resist the £8 small tub of kale chips but gave into the multi-coloured tomatoes, beetroot hummus and tiny terracotta pot of yoghurt. It has in fact been brought to my attention (by Blonde) that I have a yoghurt obsession. I completely disagree and think it’s absolutely normal to eat yoghurt five times a day – what else am I going to have on my muesli/after lunch/as an afternoon snack/with tahini as a sauce/on top of dessert? An intervention has been discussed, but I maintain I could stop any time I wanted. I own the yoghurt, the yoghurt does not own me.

But seriously, look at it. How could I not have bought this?

 

Back to the drinking – I had an hour to kill in town at aperitif hour (a thing? Well, it is on days when I’m drinking but not yet fully embracing cocktail hour) so where better to prop up the bar with a small glass of something tasty than 10 Greek Street where, of course, half the staff of Liberty Wines were also having dinner. It’s like the ravens at the Tower of London – if there’s ever not someone from Liberty having a drink or a meal at 10 Greek Street, the world ends. It’s true.

 

I was recommended a glass of Mascarello Trebbiano 2009 which was pretty good – amazing golden colour, and very tangy and full. Not massively fruity which may just be the age, but significantly more interesting than the majority of Trebbiano out there.

Soho is particularly good for me at the moment, rich as it is with places serving good, interesting wine selections by the glass. Just down the road from Greek Street is Vinoteca Soho, probably my other favourite central food/wine hangout and I went in last week for a catch-up with a very good old friend and a glass of Australian Verdelho. I can see from my somewhat blurry photo that it was the David Traeger 2009 ‘Maranda’ Verdelho and it was absolutely delicious – in fact not totally dissimilar from the Trebbiano above but with a bit more fruit, golden and tangy and ripe, and a real mouthful.

 

Drinking these two glasses, just a few days and a few streets apart, really brought home to me how much I love places like Greek Street and Vinoteca serving small glasses as the norm, and serving them well – 125ml of wine, poured from fresh, well-kept bottles into a large, good quality glass. Yes, it might mean that the price works out on the high side sip for sip, but when I’m not up for sharing a whole bottle, it’s just fantastic to have the same quality of experience on tap, rather than being lumped with a mediocre choice by default, however cheap it may be. I’d pay more for a small glass of really unusual, thought-provoking wine than I would for a third-pint of murky house wine any day of the week.

…anticlimactically

Tags

dolcetto, drinking, drinks, godello, majestic, not drinking, ocado, verdicchio, wine

Obviously I was keeping you hanging for a week to elicit a sense of suspense.

(Obviously in actual reality I’ve just been quite busy and still post-ill knackered so completely failed to write the all-important Return To Wine post until now. No excuses really)

Well, it was neither an enormous success nor a dreadful failure. I’d been building it up for so long that an element of disappointment was inevitable. I bought an absurdly expensive steak and cut it into two (risking the first red meat for six weeks so taking no chances) and then chose a single vineyard Dolcetto to go with it – not really a classic steak choice, but a vibrant, juicy wine from one of my favourite producers, Vajra. It smelt absolutely delicious and like everything I’d been waiting for – deep cherry aromas wafting around with some herbal notes which made me want to sniff it forever. Then I tasted it, and felt a bit sad in a small, quiet way. It wasn’t that it was corked or that there was a definite fault, but all I could taste were the bitter and astringent qualities that have previously so drawn me to lively wines from Northern Italy.

The same thing happened again the next day when I had to taste a sample of Bardolino – I didn’t trust my palate so got a colleague to taste in tandem and there I was again, screwing my mouth up while he declared it delicious, fruity and a perfect example of the wine.

At this point, it’s fair to say that my career flashed before my eyes. I genuinely thought I might have lost a) any level of expertise in tasting and b) more worryingly, any enjoyment of wine. Luckily I persisted and tried drinking a small glass of a wine that evening, a Petite Sirah (I think from Bogle in California – I was still too panicky about potentially permanent loss of palate to take a picture) which was way out from what I’d usually choose but was, surprisingly and thankfully, absolutely delicious. It’s quite possible that after a month of drinking coconut water and rooibos tea, I’d just become less accustomed to some of the more savoury elements of wine, so a softer and rounder example was exactly what I needed.

I’ve had another couple of glasses since then, a fairly non-descript glass of Merlot on a hen do at the weekend and a Grillo at Joe Allen for dinner on Monday, and the joy is, THANK CHRIST, coming flooding back. What has changed for the better (and I’m hoping, for good) is the enjoyment of a glass or two of wine without the inevitable desire to neck the whole bottle. I’m still also having much of the week without alcohol. Turns out that things which were always going to be fun are no less fun without a drink. And vice versa: I’ve been drunk and grumpy enough times in the past to know that while booze is a delicious, wonderous thing, it can’t work actual magic.

Things I am excited about drinking soon:

• This as a summer aperitif: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/campari-fennel-aperitif
• Exciting small-brewery beer selection that we got as a wedding present from amazing colleagues
• Moscato. Low alcohol and perfectly spring/summery.
• Something with Lillet Blanc in it. I keep seeing it around, it looks beautiful, and I’ve never tried it.

Things you should get excited about drinking i.e. lots of new Liberty listings which are available NOW or SOON for your purchase and delectation:

From Ocado – all currently on offer

• Rich, warm Monastrell from Spain – superb barbecue wine
  http://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Bodegas-Castano-Altos-de-Cuadrado/82436011?prevPageIndex=3&from=wine_cellar&tags=|20000|19980&parentContainer=|19980_SHELFVIEW
• Juicy, ripe Cotes du Rhone Villages
  http://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Camille-Cayran-Cotes-du-Rhone-Villages/82435011?prevPageIndex=3&from=wine_cellar&tags=|20000|19980&parentContainer=|19980_SHELFVIEW
• Fruity, young Rioja – traditional method with a modern touch
  http://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Prado-Maria-Rioja/82438011?prevPageIndex=5&from=wine_cellar&tags=|20000|19980&parentContainer=|19980_SHELFVIEW
• Savoury, deep Cairanne from the Rhone
  http://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Camille-Cayran-Les-Esplans-Cairanne-AOC/82437011?from=wine_cellar&tags&parentContainer=|19980_SHELFVIEW

From Majestic (coming soon):

• Fresh, vibrant Verdicchio – the picture isn’t showing yet but the bottle looks lovely, is under screw cap so will be in perfect, fresh condition, and is from one of the top producers of this region. A really good Spring aperitif.
  http://www.majestic.co.uk/find/product-is-13409
• The Caixas Albarino is a wonderful example of this wine from the North West of Spain, and is soon to be joined by a Godello, also made exclusively for Majestic. Definitely one of the grapes to look out for in 2013, this fruity, tangy, flavoursome wine will be perfect to drink throughout the Spring and Summer with fish, chicken or by itself. The first order is on the water as I write, so no page yet, but here is the Albarino in the meantime. I’ll post again when the Godello has landed.
  http://www.majestic.co.uk/find/product-is-14008

…in anticipation

Tags

drinking, gin, martini, not drinking, wine, wine cellar

I had a spare moment at lunch and I thought well why don’t I update my blog, then I realised that I can’t update my blog because I have absolutely nothing to write about because I’m STILL NOT DRINKING.

I imagine you’re even more bored by reading about how bored I am by not drinking than I am by writing about being bored by not drinking (although writing this sentence is diverting me somewhat) so I’ll stop.

Tomorrow marks a Very Exciting Day where I will attempt to drink some wine again. Having now not drunk any for 26 days (and it’s been nearly 40 days since I was in any way drinking properly – you know what I mean) and given that the most recent medical advice seems to be along the lines of ‘stay careful-ish, try a few things out but don’t go crazy’, I feel this officially sanctions me having a drop of lovely, delicious wine.

I can’t express in words how excited I am about having a glass of wine. I haven’t even been down to the wine cellar to think about what I’m going to drink yet (yes, we have a wine cellar. There’s room for two racks, a couple of boxes, and room to squat next to them with severe risk of nutting yourself every 15 seconds, but for temperature and humidity I can’t fault it.) because I’m just TOO EXCITED and think that if I decide what to drink even slightly in advance of dinner tomorrow (the allotted moment) I will literally be able to think of nothing else.

So, in the meantime, I leave you with this. Another offering from the wonderous New Yorker collected food and drink writing – a gem from Ogden Nash. If I can’t drink it, I’ll take someone else writing about it this warmly, precisely and funnily as a close second.

…nothing. Still nothing.

Tags

drinking, health, not drinking, wine

From The New Yorker, of course. Actually found this in a collected book of food writing that my husband got from ace colleague for his birthday. It is in no way helping my current state, but is brilliant.

It’s now 20 days since I drank any alcohol, and in the two weeks preceding that I had a grand total of about 4 glasses of wine, so I’m basically counting it as 33. 33 days. Over a month. This is without doubt the longest I’ve gone without a drink since legal drinking age (and possibly before, but I don’t think we need go there).

The upside – how weirdly normal it becomes to not have a drink in the evenings. Instead of ‘having a drink’ being the default setting and anything else therefore requiring an effort to divert from learned behaviour, It just hasn’t been an option so I’ve stopped expecting it. I can’t say that I’ve learned tapestry, or become fluent in Mandarin or done anything remotely useful in the massive amount of sober free time that I’ve had (albeit mostly due to being really properly sickly, too weak to do anything as a result of not being able to eat, or, in the last few days, being dizzy, headachey and heart-palpitatey. Apparently “none of which could possibly, even remotely be a side-effect of the medication I’m on” – my GP, yesterday. Thus, I’m just ANOTHER kind of sick too. Amazing.) but there’s a definite feeling of just getting a little bit more stuff done. Oh, also sleeping. Sleeping like a drowsy baby, and totally unlike my former drinking borderline-insomniac self.

The downside – not drinking. Actually, not drinking OR being able to eat much interesting food over a four-day bank holiday, which resulted in staying in, reading Game of Thrones and getting really grumpy with my husband (who, may I say, has been even more brilliant than usual by also Not Drinking (99% of the time) and eating the same weirdly restrictive food as me, again, bar the odd covert chocolate scoffing in the kitchen) instead of having leisurely pints, friends round for dinner or going out for drinks.

Not drinking wasn’t even really a downside while I was feeling crappy, it was the last thing I felt like doing. Not being able to eat properly, however, nearly killed me. I honestly hadn’t realised how much energy and interest I put into what I eat and drink, until my daily and nightly menu veered solely between the options of avocado on rice cakes, chicken salad, and fish and fennel. For two and a half weeks. The weirdest thing was the few days of just not caring enough to try and make something interesting as I had no inclination to cook or create or indeed to eat at all, and therefore no more energy to feel any better the next day.

Work couldn’t have been more sympathetic – both with the general aspects of illness, and in expressing deep, heartfelt sorrow at my desperately limited diet and inability to drink. I’ve never been more glad to work around such food and drink obsessives who were truly feeling my pain.

So, after three different diagnoses, and various scans and tests which have come to little conclusion but confirmed that lots of me is perfectly healthy, I’m starting to feel a bit more like myself. Unfortunately, I need to keep watching what I eat for the moment but the AMAZING news is that I can nearly start drinking again. A good job because I’m really running out of crazy health drinks I have to pretend to like and seriously missing wine.

I’m going to try a glass of something next week. What I’ve been obsessing about in the last few days is sitting with a small amount of red wine swishing about in the bottom of a large, bowl-shaped glass, and just taking the time to sip it, enjoy it and thoroughly immerse myself in it. Ideally it would be something intriguing and inviting, complex but gutsy enough to stand up to the bastard weather, but it will probably just be whatever we’ve got in a half bottle as it’s likely that over a month of near abstention has turned me into a massive lightweight.

…vicariously

While I’m not drinking, I’m mostly trying very hard to forget the rest of you rotters, enjoying a glass of wine with your dinners, starting the evening with something short and sharp in a martini glass or meeting friends for couple of pints at the pub. Bitter envy is never a good look.

 

One pub is very much on the mind though, and this is The Ivy House. Tucked away just off Peckham Rye on the borders of Peckham and Nunhead, it’s been a prized local for years as well as a fixture on the South London Music and Comedy scenes, featuring performers such as Elvis Costello and Stewart Lee during its various incarnations. Last year, it was sold by Enterprise Inns and closed with the intention of being turned into executive flats, much to the objections of the local community.

 

So keen were they not to lose their local that a group of residents formed an action team and started to seriously investigate the possibility of buying the pub and running it as a community interest.

 

The whole story is a long one, and as full of bureaucratic nonsense, legal and financial struggles as you’d expect (and can be found in detail in a series of Guardian articles here) but there is a recent happy ending or, more accurately, a happy start to a complex and brave journey ahead – the pub has been sold to the local community who are now planning how to run it as a shared co-operative venture.

 

It’s really only the beginning as they continue to work on the funding, the management and the business of making the pub profitable and successful in the long run, but essentially it’s a pretty amazing story. They’re on the look-out for all kinds of support, from publicity to selling share options (seriously – when else are you going to get the change to say you part-own a pub for £200?) so take a look at their website http://www.ivyhousenunhead.com/ and get involved or raise a glass to their incredible project.

 

My friend Tessa is one of the campaign’s key organisers, and her husband Howard (home-brewing supremo previously featured on this blog) has also been working on it. I performed as part of the closing party when the pub was originally sold, and can’t wait to go and enjoy a pint (or four) when both the Ivy House and I are back in full working order.

…Acai Berry Juice

Tags

acai, acai berry, drink, health, juice, wine

Acai berry juice. That’s pronounced ah-sigh-yee, or a bit like the beer, if that helps. In fact the first time I heard of this was being very confused when one of my old musician flatmates came home from a tour raving, or so I thought, about how he was about to go on an Asahi-based health kick.

Taste: very, very fruity. And berry-like. I have never tasted an actual acai berry so I have no idea how faithful this is to the authentic taste, but to me, this is somewhere between a blueberry and a mulberry, possibly with a bit of dark cherry thrown in. What is lovely, particularly now that I’m finally feeling well enough to be missing a glass of wine, is that some of the flavours really are reminiscent of some fruitier notes found in young, juicy wines. I’m not saying that this is the next best thing to a large glass of Malbec, but there’s something which, if it caught you off-guard, could almost be a Beaujolais or a really simple Grenache. Well, that’s what I’m telling myself.

Cost: not cheap at £2.50 a litre, but that was from the health-food shop in East Dulwich so I would imagine you can find it cheaper online. And it’s still considerably cheaper than a bottle of wine, and without the hangover.

Best for: swirling around in a large wine glass when not being able to crack open a bottle is driving you a bit insane.