Recent drinking round-up!

In no particular order...


I recently got some wine out of storage including this white St Romain 2008 from Vincent Perrin. I bought a case after tasting it at the domaine in January 2010 which I blogged about here. I was interested to see that my case was actually 2 boxes of 6. Still, je ne regrette buying 12! It was exactly how I remembered, with a fruity, floral quality that a lot of chardonnay doesn't have. Refreshing and zingy.

Also coming out of storage was this old friend, Yves Darviot's Beaune Greves 2002 (and magnums of 2005, which are waiting for a special occasion...). This is one of my desert island wines and it was great to try this vintage at last. It didn't disappoint.

This was a Cote de Brouilly which ACC brought round one night. Cuvee Zacharie, by Chateau Thivin. I foolishly chucked the bottle without noting the year, but it gets points just for that label, what a horror! It was fruity and rich, and quite gamey. Serious beaujolais.

Thanks are also due to ACC for bringing me back this bottle of marc from his travels. I can only apologise that it did not last long enough for him to try it... Made at Domaine Morot, it was enjoyable, with a good nuts-and-raisins thing going on, but I have to say it was no match for the Felettig which remains the gold standard of all things marc.

A double-bill of Odoul-Coquard... first the 2008 Bourgogne Rouge which is really quite delicious. G bought it, not me, and I'm kicking myself. Shall be looking out for it in 2010. And then the 2007 Vosne-Romanee which I was expecting to be good. It had lovely sweet, warm fruit on the nose, blackcurrants and chocolate, and on the palate was very soft and supple, quite light for a Vosne. "Lovely", "beautiful" and "pretty" were all used to describe it. This is only a village wine, but we decided that if it had been a premier cru, it would have scored a 9. Praise indeed. We felt it was drinking now but had a good future ahead of it too, no rush.

A double-bill of Alsace wines from Hugel, both en demi. 1973 Gewurtz and 1979 Muscat. You would not have guessed they were that age. Still absolutely singing.

And finally, this little number which I picked up in Selfridges on Friday: Gutierrez Colosia Fino. This is also a half bottle and wasn't cheap at £11.90 but I fancied trying it to see if it was worth it. It does seem I paid through the nose (Selfridges' pricing policy: think of a number and double it) as these people have it for £8.75 a half. Also, I had been suffering due to the lack of La Goya which spookily became unavailable from Corneys just after I bought a case. Have just checked and see that it's back, hurrah!, but seems to have gone up to £6.29 a half - even at that price, it's worth it. Anyway, the Gutierrez stuff was a fantastic pale colour, and clean as a whistle. It really was very good and went very well with the excellent nuts from the Middle Eastern counter but I don't think I'll be rushing to buy it again.

Dinner at T's, 19th Aug

On Friday night, G and I had the honour of an invitation to T's place in the Barbican to help him out with some items that needed drinking up.

It was a beautiful evening, sunny and warm. I met G outside his office and we wended our way past vast throngs of people clutching pints outside pubs before entering the concrete jungle that is the Barbican. We navigated to T's flat relatively successfully by our standards and found a range of enticing nibbles had been laid out along with a decanter of D'Oliveira's Sercial 1937.

This was a stunning bottle of madeira. It had a sharp, walnutty edge to it, and an overall intensity of flavour that went on for several minutes.

We stood on the balcony which had a great view of the terraces of the Barbican Centre. Fountains were playing on the lakes and there was a spectacular sunset with pink-tinged clouds. T couldn't have picked a better evening.

With dinner, we drank some white and pink Vina Tondonia from 2000 (the white is called Vina Gravonia). I think it's fair to say that the general consensus was that while the white was good and very interesting, the pink is unique and unlike anything else, and generally pretty damned wonderful. I have blogged about it before here.

After dinner came the coup de resistance, a bottle of 1945 Martinez port which T acquired in mysterious circumstances back in the 1960s and had somehow managed to resist drinking ever since. I think G had dropped hints that it probably did need drinking soon...

What I found surprising was how light it was. One tends to expect port to be raisiny and heavy, but this had flavours of caramel and was quite floral - G detected violets. It was very mellow and smooth and appeared not to have suffered from its occasional relocations.

I had to admit, sheepishly, that I'd never heard of Martinez - they're not one of the well-known port shippers like Croft or Taylors. It turns out that in 1960 they were sold to Harvey's of Bristol. However, apparently in 2006, Martinez was bought by the Symingtons who are planning to revitalise it as a brand. We shall see.

At the very end of the evening, T wheeled out this rather fine Cognac from Frapin which I could only manage a small glass of (lightweight) but it was very good, particularly with a salted caramel or seven from the Artisan du Chocolat. How did T know that I have recently developed an addiction to these, as well as to rillettes, which was served earlier in the evening? Spooky!

It was a wonderful evening and it a real privilege to get to drink both the Sercial and the port. Thanks!

SPNS summer dinner, 8th July

A de V has been on an extended break but is now back with a vengeance and with some catching up to do!

Back in July, G organised a Swiss Pinot Noir Society dinner which was held at the Perseverance on Shroton Street just round the corner from Marylebone Station. We'd heard good things about this place from ACC and also the Dos Hermanos blog, and it was felt that a change from the Savile was in order.

It took me longer to walk there than I'd expected, so I was a little hot and bothered when I arrived, but things rapidly improved as I joined ACC and T in the downstairs bar and ordered a Prosecco cocktail from the blackboard of tempting goodies. We also got a bowl of hand-made crinkle-cut crisps, which were excellent. Eventually G turned up which completed the quartet for the evening, as sadly our fellow-members P and D were unable to attend on this occasion.

Suitably restored, we went upstairs to the dining room, which is a beautiful room with lovely Georgian windows facing south down towards the Marylebone Road.

Proceedings commenced with my contribution, a bottle of Veuve Cliquot Rose 1985. I'd been saving this up for a special occasion, and since it was my birthday 3 days later this felt like a good time. I got it at an auction, so there was an element of doubt about whether it would be ok or not. It was!

It was a beautiful dark salmon colour, with slow bubbles. Mature and wonderful. Everybody liked it.


Next up was G's bottle, a 1983 gewurztraminer from Rolly Gassman, which was also well-received. It was medium-sweet and aromatic with lychees and rose on the nose. T also detected citrus peel and ACC noted that it was not "too grandmother's handbag", always a good thing.

Third was ACC's offering, a 2007 Chassagne-Montrachet from Ramonet. I was very excited about this as a) I love red Chassagne, b) I love 2007 and c) I love Ramonet! I raved about it in the Book - wonderful colour, beautiful perfume, lovely mouthfeel, quite velvety. Very sensuous and an excellent expression of pinot noir. T agreed - lovely Burgundy, ACC wrote something boastful which I can't read (except to tell that it's boastful) and G was the sole voice of dissent saying it was "good, but no more than usually sensational". Some people are hard to please. Just look at it!

A quick honorable mention of the food at this point, which was excellent - the menu tends towards the meaty and offally which works for me, and is of the school of proper ingredients not messed about. For my main course I had calves liver which came with potatoes and sage. Mmmm. I'm amazed that I managed to take the time to take a photo of it instead of digging straight in!

Finally, we had Trevor's wine which had a very unusual label. The photo has come out rather blurred, but even in focus it was hard to work out what this was. It described itself as a Vin de France by Pascal Simonutti, who is based in the Loire Valley.

G detected rancio on the nose and found it an acquired taste. Was it really good or really terrible, he asked tactfully? My response was "Jesus Christ!" It was a brown murky colour and I found that it smelled of old socks and/or potting shed - T suggested turps. The palate was consistent with the nose i.e. horrible. All in all, very interesting, but not my cup of tea.

Moving swiftly on, this was an excellent dinner and I have already been back to the Perseverance where I had another wonderful meal and some very keen value vieille prune. This is the sort of pub I wish was just round the corner.

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!