Recent drinking round-up

Things have been hectic at A de V Towers of late but today I have a chance to do a catch-up report on what drinking has been going down...

This Santenay from Lucien Muzard & Fils disappointingly turned out to have a fault. It had a lot of volatile alcohol on the nose, on the palate there was a strange graininess and the finish was bitter. We felt it was not as it should be, so that was 19 euros down the sink. It was one of the ones I brought back from the shop in Santenay. C'est la vie.

More pleasingly I can report that this Pommard Vieilles Vignes from Latour-Labille was a stunner. From G's cellar - he wisely picked up a case. It wasn't very Pommard in character which I suppose is a criticism, but if I'd been guessing blind I think I would have thought it was a Chambolle, which is definitely praise. It was a vibrant purple colour and G described the nose as super-charged beaujolais with violet and cinnamon. On the palate it was pretty, elegant, had lovely fruit. I detected victoria plums while G got chocolate orange peel. There was a lot going on! It was drinking now but there's no rush.

Also from G's cellar, a Gevrey-Chambertin 2005 from Huguenot. This had a very distinct nose of pear drops and tasted of liquorice root but was surprisingly easy drinking for a Gevrey (which I am coming to realise I don't like very much except in winter with hearty red meat). It was smooth and remarkably light for a wine from 2005. It had an excellent finish, and went very well with my slow-cooked ragu sauce. Again, drinking but will keep.

I picked up a case of this 2000 Beaune 1er cru Clos du Roi from Domaine Chanson at auction. It's very old school red Burgundy with a hefty dose of the sugar bag. We got stewed plums on the palate. I quite like it, but it's relatively rustic. It wasn't expensive by premier cru standards so I shan't feel guilty necking it on a weeknight as autumn draws in. Originally we gave it an 8 but I suspect it may end up being downgraded to a 7 - the jury is still out.

I brought back this Rully 1er cru Clos St Jacques 2007 from Domaine de la Folie from the shop in Meursault back in January. It was a pale gold colour and had lemon and butter on the nose. It was quite light and refreshing on the palate, with good acidity, and had an excellent finish. We toyed with giving it a 9 but settled for a respectable 8. At around 18 euros it was good value.

Thought I'd better mention this since it's become staple drink of choice over the past couple of weeks - halves of La Goya manzanilla from Corney and Barrow. Argh! It's not on their website any more! I hope this is a temporary blip as I was just about to order some more. It's around £4.50 a half, a snip. Delicious cold from the fridge and best to drink it all in one go if possible as it deteriorates overnight.

And finally, what have we here? This morning I was cleaning my flat and took the rubbish down to the bin room where there's a little shelf where occasionally people leave stuff which other people can then take if they want (usually knackered house plants etc.) This morning I found two bottles of 1982 Chambertin grand cru "Couvent de la Visitation" 1982 from Patriarche sitting there, alongside a half-drunk bottle of Crofts ruby port. I wasn't tempted by the port but swiped the Chambertin and am very curious about it. I wonder if it was an unwanted present. Anyway, very nice of whoever to leave it in the bin room for me to find! The levels don't look too bad for such an old wine and the labels are quite pristine as you can see. It also has a terrible drawing on it of a sort of courtyard thing, which according to the Inverse Law of Labels bodes well. I think I shall try one with G and see how we get on - I shall report back. If all goes well, the other could be a perfect candidate for a Swiss Pinot Noir Society dinner...

Dinner at the Gilbert Scott, 25th May

I'm not sure what happened in May, but things went a bit crazy. If I'm giving the impression that I constantly eat out at fine restaurants, that is not the case at all, but there just seem to have been a run of them lately. It'll be back to porridge, as granny used to say, shortly.

I'd been aware that the St Pancras Hotel was about to re-open in the near future and in an idle moment at work googled it to find that the restaurant had in fact just opened. It's called the Gilbert Scott after the architect of the hotel and is run by Marcus Wareing although he seems remarkably reticent about it and there's little mention of him on the website.

My only previous visit here was a few years ago when the hotel was derelict. G and I went on a tour of the building and it was an absolutely magical experience. I remember the staircase being stunningly beautiful, and it was sad to see this wonderful building rotting away, so I'm thrilled that it's been restored, and in my not-very-expert opinion, they've done a smashing job.

C and I agreed to go there for the "early supper" deal after work one evening (£19 for two courses, £24 for three). Walking through the front entrance one immediately finds oneself in the bar, which is spectacular. NB this is the bar for the Gilbert Scott, not the Booking Office Bar for the hotel which is also on my hit list.

I'd certainly like to come here for cocktails some time, but on this occasion we were booked in for dinner so we were taken into the main restaurant.

This photo doesn't quite do justice to the room. The ceiling is very high indeed and when sitting down, one could barely see out of the windows which open onto the front sweep of the hotel drive.

It was only about 6.00 so the dining room was fairly empty and there were lots of smartly-dressed waiting staff hovering about. We were given big paper menus which had an awful lot of dishes on them, and then in the bottom-left hand corner we spotted our early supper deal. The wine list was also quite confusing and it took me a while to notice that within the various categories, they did not proceed in an orderly fashion from cheap and cheerful to super-expensive, but were all jumbled up from a price point of view. Not helpful.

We chose a bottle of Argentinian Torrontes which at £30 was one of the cheapest bottles on the list and asked for a jug of water. Perhaps it was just me but I thought the waitress's lips curled slightly at that point. After the wine had been poured, the bottle was whisked away and I don't know where it went - it certainly wasn't nearby. Note this point because it becomes significant later...

For starters, C had the pork pie and I had Southwold sprats with ketchup. Both servings were enormous - the pork pie was more like a large slab of terrine with some pastry round the edge, and my bowl of sprats appeared to be bottomless. In fact I would go so far to say that the portion sizes were rather too big, given the lack of accompanying side-dishes or garnishes to liven things up.

For our main course we both had the Cumberland sausage and mash, which came in cute individual little pans. It did exactly what it said on the tin, and the mash was very delicious and clearly had about a pound of butter in it, but again one felt the need of a vegetable or side dish just for variety.

For pudding, C had the turkish delight cheesecake (I think she'd been thinking about it all day) while I went for the Sussex pond pudding sundae. This time, the portions were miniscule! One had to do a double-take to spot anything on one's plate. C's first impression of the cheesecake was that it was very disappointing and not what she'd expected, but then it grew on her. I got to try a bit and we agreed that it was more like a mousse than a cheesecake. My pudding was nice but nothing spectacular and I ate it in about 2 mouthfuls.

Throughout the meal our wine glasses had been assiduously topped up, but each time the bottle had been whisked away to its mystery location. I found this very irritating and over-controlling. I've had enough bad experiences with wine waiters to prefer to be left to refill my own glass. It also made it hard to judge how much we'd had - were we 2/3 through the bottle or had we finished it?

I reckoned we'd finished it, so I was quite surprised when a waiter came back and gave us a very hearty refill. On tasting, this wine was very bland, some sort of pinot grigio if I had to guess, and certainly not our zingy Torrontes! This presented us with a dilemma. We'd clearly been given two glasses of someone else's wine. What should we do? In the end we kept quiet about it (I didn't want to cause a fuss, and nor did I want to risk having to pay for someone else's stuff) and left it. They must have got us confused with another table - a pretty shocking thing to happen in a place like this. Mistakes do happen, but if they didn't have such a silly system with the wine, this particular mistake wouldn't have been possible.

We had a coffee, and then got the bill. C noticed that a £2 cover charge had been slapped on for each of us. I knew this was likely to happen, as I'd read Nicholas Lander's review of the restaurant in the FT. C asked the waitress what the cover charge was for, and we listened to 2 minutes of drivel about how the price of vegetables varied with the seasons and the cover charge was to avoid the need to change the prices of the dishes each day. I've never heard such a load of claptrap in my life and sat there trying to keep a straight face. Really, when is the last time one heard of paying a cover charge in this day and age? It just seems greedy.

Including food, wine, coffee, cover charge and service, our bill was £100 for two - yet again - but we left with a sour taste in our mouths feeling that we'd been screwed over. Before we went, I'd been wondering about taking my family here for lunch to celebrate my birthday which is coming up soon, but by the time we had finished I'd decided there was no way I'd be coming back to the restaurant in the near future. I might visit the bar though!

Summer party masterclass at Claridges, 21st May

To celebrate my mother's birthday, I took her to a summer party masterclass at Claridges. We arrived at 11.30 and were shown into the Fumoir Bar, which I didn't know existed! It's a very small bar in the middle of the building, with black and white pictures of glamorous women smoking while wearing big hats. Here we had coffee and pastries and met the other people on the class. There were only six of us, all women. I can't say I was surprised by that, as the masterclass was billed as answering questions along the lines of "What are THE season's canapes of choice?"

After some chitchat, Michael the extremely smooth food and beverage manager took us down to the kitchens in the basement and into a room which apparently is normally where they keep/carve the meat! A table had been laid out with six director-style stools round it. Here we were introduced to Martyn Nail, the executive chef.

I'd been under the impression that Gordon Ramsay ran the restaurant at Claridges so wasn't quite clear where Martyn fit into the system but it turned out that Ramsay's restaurant is completely separate from the hotel kitchen. For the hotel, they have 55 people working in the kitchen, but not all at once. They were mainly hidden from view in different rooms, but the atmosphere seemed very calm and there wasn't any shouting, although there was the occasional bang or crash!

Martyn showed us how to make a range of canapes:

• peppered goats cheese with raspberry and pine nut
• blinis with smoked salmon and chives
• asparagus with blue cheese on a walnut biscuit
• cherry tomatoes with crab, on a little swirly pastry disc
• tuna sashimi with ginger and coriander
• scallops wrapped in pancetta with tomato compote
• lamb kebab with pea puree

He was very down-to-earth and and the atmosphere was informal so we felt we could ask him anything. There was a lot of discussion about where we could get some of the ingredients, where he got his ideas from (Waitrose!), and what it was like working in the hotel where they put on many events including film premieres. They had three weddings in the hotel that afternoon and apparently the brides were all arriving at the same time! I was impressed by the logistics and it was a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight.

There was real attention to detail in the canapes, e.g. with pea shoots being used as a garnish, because they are very pretty, and raspberries being cut into quarters. I don't think I've ever halved a raspberry let alone quartered one! We watched in awe, and also with a twinge of jealousy as all his ingredients had been prepared and put in little plastic tubs beforehand by more junior chefs.

The cooking demo went on for about an hour and a half and then we were taken back upstairs to the Fumoir Bar where two charming and lively young men - one the head bartender of the main Claridges Bar, and one the head bartender of the Fumoir Bar - did a double act where they made cocktails while we sat around the bar and drank them and ate the canapes which were brought up from the kitchen. The cocktails included:

• a bellini
• a variation on the bellini involving strawberries and creme de cassis
• Pimm's
• Pimm's Royale
• a mojito
• a pear and passionfruit variation on the mojito, which we loved
• a gin fizz
• a ruby fizz, made with sloe gin and grenadine

By this stage we were fairly merry so we didn't actually drink everything that was going. Unbelievable, I know... Eventually at about 4.00 we poured ourselves into a taxi and went to meet my father for a welcome coffee at the Wellcome Collection. We were given goody bags containing an apron and a jar of jam, and earlier on we'd been given a booklet containing all the recipes.

The whole thing was a fantastic and exclusive experience and we felt very pampered and looked after throughout. At £165 a pop it wasn't cheap but it was a wonderful way to spend a day. Most importantly I think Mum enjoyed it! What on earth will I give her next year?

Dinner at the Hawksmoor Seven Dials, 19th May

I've been a longstanding fan of the Hawksmoor restaurant in Spitalfields, which is London's answer to a New York steakhouse. So I was very keen to try the new opening in Covent Garden, and finally enticed a steak-loving friend to come with me.

On this particular Thursday evening I'd had a stressful day involving a trip to Newbury, but it was the last time I'll have to do that so I was feeling very relieved and happy it was all over. We were supposed to meet at 6.30 but my friend was running late. I'd anticipated this eventuality and had some reading material to hand, so I sat at the bar to wait for her and guzzled the most welcome French 75 of my life (sparking a new French 75 project) feeling very cosmopolitan and girl-about-town.

When my friend arrived, we went through to the restaurant which is much bigger than the Spitalfields one. The decor is wood and the odd industrial-looking steel appendage here and there. There aren't any soft furnishings so it's quite noisy.

We decided to skip starters and crack on with the steak. The only problem was that they have a blackboard listing what's available and the smallest thing was 600g, whereas my friend only wanted a 200g steak. I eventually persuaded her that there was nothing for it, we'd just have to share the 600g one.

We had a bit of a wait, but fortunately there was bread and butter to keep us going in the meantime. Clearly they expect you to have a starter. When the steak arrived, my friend's fears quietly vanished and she had no trouble putting away her half. (Do I sound slightly disappointed about that?) We had some chips cooked in beef dripping to go with it, and lettuce and peas, and bearnaise sauce. It was all delicious.

For pudding, I went for the salted caramel ice cream which was divine and a snip for just £3. My share of the bill including my cocktail, which originally they left off the bill, but I'm a good citizen so I owned up, and a glass of perfectly adequate red was £50. I've had a number of meals that have come in around this level lately, and this was the best of the lot. If we'd had a bottle of wine or starters it would have been more, but given the size of the main courses, starters aren't really necessary. I shall certainly be back, because although I can do the steak myself (they get them from the Ginger Pig), it's worth it for the chips alone. They also do corkage for £5 on Monday nights, which is something that definitely has to be tried!

Lunch at my place, 15th May

I have a blogging backlog to get through (shocking! tragic!) but am hoping to do it this week - stay tuned.

Two Sundays ago I invited G, ACC and Baron McG round for lunch. We started with kir royales / bellinis made with Cremant de Bougogne from Dufouleur and Chambord or Creme de Peche (I have a feeling G and I rudely helped ourselves to most of the Chambord before the others arrived) served with some gougeres fresh from the oven. That recipe alone makes Michel Roux's Eggs book well worth the price of admission.

Next up was a bottle of Meursault 1er cru Charmes 2005 from Moret-Nomine. I'd only tasted his wines very young before at one of ACC's "try before you buy" tastings last year, so when I found this on the Wine Society list I couldn't resist, and had been looking out for an opportunity to crack it, as I thought it would be a special occasion kind of wine.

I wasn't disappointed. We decanted it for about half an hour, and it had a lovely golden colour. On the nose it was rich and big and on the palate it had an unctuous mouthfeel and was fat and buttery but with the acidity to balance it. My notes read "Wonderful!" but I didn't quite think it merited a 10, so it got a 9 in the end. It did go very well with the smoked sea trout we had as a starter.

To continue the Meursault theme, after that we had a bottle of the 2007 red Meursault 1er cru Les Cras from Domaine Latour-Labille, provided by G. This was decanted for 2 hours. It had a dark, plummy colour and the nose was wonderful - sweet, heady and with jammy berry fruit. On the palate I've made the articulate tasting note "this is the bollocks". Excellent and accomplished, as it was last time we had it which I blogged about here. We had this with cold beef from the Ginger Pig which I'd roasted the night before.

With the cheese course, we had this Beaune Clos du Roi 2002 from Lois Dufouleur, provided by the Baron. He told us that he bought this at the St Vincent festival and that it had been in his cellar for 3 years so we were privileged to get to drink it!

It had about an hour in the decanter. The colour was dark and serieux, and the nose had that classic beautiful Beaune perfume or "steamy farmyard" according to the Baron. On the palate it was lovely, perfectly balanced and, dare I say it, haunting. It was drinking perfectly now and went very well with the cheese. G said "the only criticism I have of this wine is" (dramatic pause) "that it's not in magnum".

And finally, with our rhubarb crumble we had this Coteaux du Layon 2003 from Domaine de Pierre Blanche, provided by ACC. It was a beautiful golden colour and was luscious, sweet and herbaceous. I wasn't making proper notes by this stage, as we were singing along to various Pet Shop Boys classics, mis-remembering lyrics and competing to see who could do the worst impression of Chris Lowe's monologue on Paninaro. After that we inflicted some Red Biddy on the Baron, but hopefully we're still on speaking terms!

SPNS dinner, 13th May

Last Friday saw the return of the Swiss Pinot Noir Society. It was a glorious evening and we sat outside in the courtyard of the Savile where T instigated proceedings by producing a pink fizz and challenging the rest of us to guess what it was. The last time T produced a bottle of pink fizz, it was from Bulgaria and tasted like paracetamol. This time, fortunately, it did not.

We came up with a wide range of possibilities but it hadn't occurred to any of us that it might actually be, in fact, Swiss Pinot Noir. It was Mauler Tradition Rose to be precise but sadly I do not have a photo of the bottle as we left it downstairs. Apparently it also included cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc, if I have deciphered the spidery handwriting in the Book correctly. Comments ranged from "Taste of strawberries and complex from all the different grapes" to "Great mouthwash". I felt the latter was harsh. It was a perfectly agreeable aperitif and the fact that we all necked a second bottle without any complaints confirms that.

Then it was upstairs for dinner where I produced a bottle of Domaine Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc 2007. This particular bottle did not show as well as it usually does and left some of us slightly disappointed. I also wonder if failure to decant and the use of extremely small wine glasses (as opposed to my usual Riedels ahem), may have made an impact. Oh well!

Next up was a Californian Mountain Barbera 1968 from Louis M Martin provided by D. I found this big and powerful with dried fruits. It had survived very well considering it was 43 years old. G thought it was "genuinely unusual and excellent" and the other comments in the book were also favourable. At the end of the evening I sneakily took some photos on my phone and it's the one on the right.

Then we had a Confradeiro Douro Riserva 2000 from Sandeman, provided by G. This was a lovely drop too - again big, fruity and rich. I felt it was a crowd-pleaser. T described it as thick and gooey which I believe are terms of high praise coming from him. Some felt it was still on the young side.

After that, D kindly produced a second bottle, but this time something very different: a Sheldrake Point 2007 Barrel Reserve Finger Lakes Cabernet Franc. I'm not a particular fan of cabernet franc but this made me reconsider - it was harmonious and drinkable, a lovely wine. P thought it was the most exciting wine of the evening (so far) and T who was clearly incoherent by this stage simply said "Words fail me. Fantastic!"

We moved on to a sweet wine but somehow the Savile had managed to lose P's bottle (hope it turns up again!) so he opted for a Chateau Doisy-Vedrines 1996 from the wine list. G detected lemon and pineapple on the nose and I think the general verdict was that this was decent sauternes but didn't offer any surprises. Apparently it went well with P's treacle tart!

And finally, it was on to the wine I had been looking forward to for several months, ACC's "Yates's Red Biddy". Some stragglers had fallen by the wayside by this point or been nobbled by an extremely boring man with a repetitive anecdote. How they missed out... In fact this was not wine but was described on the bottle as "Australian Red Wine Blended with Grape Brandy".

G said it was the second worst wine ever produced for an SPNS dinner, after the Israeli pomegranate wine we had some while back, while ACC opined that it was best of show and possibly even better than Lafite or Latour! I wrote "Sensational! Remarkable! Wow!" which I felt tactfully failed to answer the question of whether it was good or bad. Shortly afterwards everyone made their excuses so I was left to take the bottle home with me to inflict on Baron McG on Sunday... Strangely, there is still some left!

All in all, a great evening and a wonderful range of wines.

Beaune 1er cru Les Aigrots 2005, Domaine de Montille

We had this white Beaune a couple of weeks ago, which came from the Wine Society. Expectations were high as this is a domaine we have liked in the past, with their trademark low alcohol levels (this was 12.5%) and purity, and of course Hubert de Montille's star appearance in Bottle Shock! (joke, it was actually Mondovino).

We didn't decant it but I think maybe we should have done, as we felt it improved as time went on. It had a very pale colour and looked like a Chablis. On the nose, it was serious and austere, not a big fat chardonnay monster. And on the palate, similar - precise, well-balanced and with a lot of "grip".

We tried hard to think what it reminded us of - it wasn't like a Puligny or a Meursault. I thought there was some resemblance to a Raveneau Chablis and G agreed that the precision was similar, but it wasn't flinty. We also thought it was a bit like a mini Corton. We haven't drunk all that much white Beaune, but the Aigrots vineyard is next to Clos des Mouches which is the one we have had a couple of times, and liked a lot.

This was a wine that demanded to be taken seriously and G described it as cerebral, which was spot on. It went very well with our wild Alaskan salmon (no factory farmed fish for me) and we gave it a 9. In fact G gave it a 9.2 but we don't recognise decimal places.

I hadn't checked beforehand how much it cost, but our feeling was that it was £35 booze. Afterwards I had a look at the trusty premier cru spreadsheet and saw that it was £33, but the WS don't seem to have it any more, which is a shame. I continue to rate this domaine highly.