Trip to Umbria, Sept 2015

Apologies in advance as this won't be a particularly wine-related post but I feel the need to write about What I Did on My Holidays and post some nice photos.

So, last week my mother and I went to Umbria on an art tour. I met Mum at St Pancras on Monday morning and we travelled to Heathrow Terminal 5 where we met up with Catherine Fletcher, our tour leader for the week. Catherine is a history professor and provided just the right amount of information and guidance during the week. We also met Yates, who was the assistant for the trip, and was in his early 20s. The flight was fairly uneventful. Mum hadn't had much breakfast and I'd confidently told her that we'd get lunch on the flight but this turned out to be a small pastrami roll and an iced bun. I expected more from BA!

Somewhat ravenous, we landed in Rome, met up with the other people on the tour (six couples and a lady by herself) and a bus took us to Perugia where we were staying at the Hotel Brufani Palace. This is at the top of the hill, which meant we had an amazing view from our room.

We had "welcome drinks" and even more welcome canapes, and then a four-course dinner at the hotel with our fellow tourists. I'd been making jokes beforehand about how the tour would be full of old people and that did indeed turn out to be the case except that Catherine was around my age and Yates brought the average down considerably.

On Tuesday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel, which put on an extensive buffet, and I enjoyed the terrible musak - it seemed that they had just one tape which repeated itself every hour or so. Then it was time for a look round Perugia. We went down the steep Via dei Priori to the church of San Bernadino which was lovely, inside and out.

We had a quick coffee break and then visted the Board of the Exchange with some fascinating and grisly artwork, and had a trip round the National Gallery of Umbria which was stocked with treasures such as this (this is a photo of the postcard, not the real thing).

In the afternoon, we had free time, so we had lunch at a little pavement cafe and then did some further wandering round Perugia.

We had been excited beforehand about the Etruscan ruins supposedly visible from the transparent floor of the hotel swimming pool. Sadly the swimming pool was closed while we were there, but we were able to pop down and look through the floor at the ruins, and steal some much-needed water from the water cooler as opposed to paying 5.50 euros a bottle from the minibar in our room.

In the evening we gathered on the terrace of the Brufani Palace for a complimentary drink. Everyone was ordering glasses of wine but Catherine went for an Aperol Spritz and I followed suit. The arrival of these bright orange cocktails caused some excitement among the old members of the group who didn't seem to have come across them before. We then went to a nearby restaurant, Altromondo which was able to accommodate eight of us at short notice, did decent food and was good value.

On Wednesday we visited Todi to look at a church briefly. I liked the symmetry of it but the interior wasn't my kind of thing.

Then it was back on the bus for a trip along some very windy and picturesque roads to Orvieto. Mum and I liked Orvieto, possibly because we had a large glass of the stuff with lunch!

In the afternoon, we visited the cathedral which sadly had scaffolding up outside but was pretty impressive inside.

Then we wended our way back to the funicular railway. There was time for a quick shot of the vineyards.

That evening, we had dinner together as a group at La Taverna which was very jolly - another four course meal with plenty of wine!

Thursday was "Piero" day beginning with a trip to a tiny museum in Moneterchi, a little village with just one fresco which had been taken from the local church.

I have to admit I didn't know much about Piero della Francesca previously but I now see the error of my ways!

After that, it was on to Arezzo where we enjoyed wandering round the shops and regrouped after lunch for a look at the church, and in particular the Legend of the True Cross which was very impressive. There was a lot going on. This was one of the nicer bits, involving the Queen of Sheba.

Finally we stopped off at Sansepolcro to look at the Resurrection. This was in the process of being restored and first we had to wait for the lights to come on, then found that there was a sort of pulley-bucket arrangement impeding our view, which seemed rather unnecessary as nobody was actually working on it at the time. The painting is quite remarkable though.

We got back to Perugia quite late, and that evening Mum and I and the other lady travelling by herself went to a slightly shabby but honest pizza restaurant in a little alley where the pizzas were 5 euros and the Montefalco wine was 13 euros a bottle. There was a music festival going on and we walked past a brass band playing some great music. Generally the atmosphere in Perugia was quite lively and youthful, due to the university there and the good weather!

On Friday, we visited Spello to look at frescoes by Pinturrichio. We really liked these, and I bought a couple of postcards for my desk at work. I particularly like the Holy Spirit, in avian form, divebombing Mary.

There was time for a walk around the village and Mum and I enjoyed spotting this old Fiat 500 carefully parked.

Next up was Spoleto. A market was being held which meant that the bus couldn't stop where it had been planned, and we ended up going up the hill on the other side of a great ravine and then walking across the bridge. I'd been to Spoleto before, four years ago, but never made it into the centre of town on that occasion!

My cousin had recommended a restaurant called Il Tempio del Gusto, which we thought we were very unlikely to find, but amazingly we found ourselves walking past it so we went there for lunch. This turned out to be a pretty fancy place with serious food. One of my courses involved a sesame brandy snap filled with goats cheese which was particularly delicious.

The only downside was that we might still be there right now as they didn't bring the bill despite multiple attempts to make eye contact. My mother suggested that we should try to pay at the desk, and thinking of my experiences dining out in fancy French restaurants, I said we couldn't possibly do that as it would be very offensive to all concerned. About 20 minutes later one of the waitresses came over and told us to pay at the counter. Huh! The bill was a mere 50 euros for two courses, a generous glass of white wine and coffee (which came with petits fours) - can't argue with that.

In the afternoon, we visited the Roman House which we liked very much with its lovely mosaics. It was three euros well spent!

We still had some time to kill, so decided to attempt to find the Roman amphitheatre. This involved walking down about 200 steps and when we got to the bottom, we found the approximate site but it didn't seem to be open to the public. The pressure was on as either we could walk back up the 200 steps (in the midday heat) or I needed to find the escalator. Fortunately my navigation was up to it and this very welcome sight appeared, the first of about 5 escalators up the hill.

Then we met the rest of the group and had a look round Spoleto cathedral, which was wonderful.

That evening, the group went to Osteria a Priori where we sat on a long table upstairs and had the tasting menu. This was great fun and the Sagrantino di Montefalco red wine was particularly fine although on inspecting the label I discovered it was 15% alcohol!

On Saturday there was a trip to Assisi. We'd heard about Assisi from my aunt, and so when the opportunity to come back at lunchtime was presented, instead of staying there for the whole day, we grabbed it with both hands. This turned out to be a wise decision as it wasn't our cup of tea at all. It was over-run with coach parties, and there was a huge basilica with an overwhelming amount of art, but you're not supposed to talk inside, so Catherine wasn't able to explain any of it to us in situ. There were various ecclesiastical flunkies with microphones who every now and then said "Silencio" which made me think inappropriately about Mulholland Drive. The contradiction between what St Francis stood for and this ghastly theme park was startling, and we couldn't wait to get out of there.

Back in Perugia, Mum wondered what was happening with the Labour leadership election and amazingly we were able to watch the results live online on the BBC News site on her ipad. Then we had lunch at a little cafe perched on the cliff-side next to the lift which takes you down to the metro. A glass of Grechetto accompanied our slice of pizza very nicely, and I spotted a little lizard hiding in the bushes. We did some more walking around Perugia in the afternoon but also enjoyed the opportunity to have some reading/sleeping time. In the evening, we had a pre-prandial drink on the terrace. Aperol Spritzes all round!

That evening we went back to Altromondo for dinner, and found several other members of our party dining there too.

The last day of touring was Sunday, when we visited Gubbio.

It was quite a steep walk up into the town, although there were also some lifts. We visited the Ducal Palace which was impressive.

Then we wandered around a bit. Mum was looking for something depicting the story of the Wolf of Gubbio, which was a bad wolf that went around eating people until St Francis had a word with it and it saw the error of its ways. We did manage to find several really tacky depictions of this but nothing remotely tasteful!

We found a nice cafe on a square to have lunch at, and halfway through lunch a long succession of vintage cars went hurtling past, honking and causing much excitement.

Soon after that, the heavens opened, for the first time on our trip, so our lunch ended prematurely and we were quite relieved when the bus arrived to take us back to Perugia.

That evening we had a quick aperitif in the hotel bar - I had a Negroni this time just to ring the changes, and Mum had a glass of prosecco - and then we had our final dinner in the private room of the hotel restaurant. It was another jolly evening and I have to say the others on the trip were extremely nice and everyone got on well.

On Monday morning I went to check out and pay our bill, and discovered a random 35 euro bar charge. Either Mum had been ordering bottles of prosecco behind my back, or there had been some mistake. To their credit, they refunded it fairly speedily, but I think in future I'd probably pay my way rather than charging drinks to the hotel room.

Our trip back to the UK went fairly smoothly and although our flight was delayed, my mother was able to catch her train home and I returned to AduV Towers and had a final Negroni of the hols.

It had been a great week, and this beautiful view will stay with me for some time!

Recent drinking round-up, 5th Sept

It has been a quiet August on the drinking front, as G was away for two weeks and I managed a record-breaking 11 days on the wagon in his absence, With our livers now squeaky clean and raring to process some alcohol, I arranged for some wine to come out of storage.

Last Saturday I took this bottle of Oroncio Pouilly-Fume Les Palefreniers 2008 over to ACC's for lunch. It went down well. It's quite unusual, a sauvignon blanc given the full Burgundy treatment, and is rich and grapefruity and generally rather wonderful and delicious. I ordered it nearly 3 years ago at the Maison Romane dinner (here) and am very happy with it!

Then, on Sunday evening, to celebrate G's successful trip away, we had this 2008 Vosne-Romanee Aux Reas from Alain Guyard. I bought a case of this some time ago and noticed it was in two six-packs so thought it was time to see how it was getting on, and indeed I think it's starting to drink now. It was perhaps on the light side for a Vosne but none the worse for that.

As it was a bank holiday Monday, I made a terrine and we pushed the boat out with a bottle of 2006 Meursault 1er cru Gouttes d'Or from Moret-Nomine. I snapped this up in a recent bin-end sale from the Burgundy Portfolio and had slightly wondered if it might be over the hill, but no, it was fabulous! Big, rich and nutty, all the things I like about Meursault. It's certainly drinking now but there is no particular rush and I'm sure getting through the other 5 bottles won't pose any sort of problem.

Then, on Thursday, a last-minute arrangement was made for ACC to join us for dinner with a selection of goodies which had been presented to a certain restaurant earlier in the day. Who were we to turn down such an invitation? This proved a fascinating tasting as it enabled us to see how certain things are getting on and generally congratulate ourselves on previous purchases.

Starting with the whites, we tried a 2014 Bourgogne Blanc from Domaine Celine & Frederic Gueguen, who are based in Chablis. Although this wasn't a Chablis, G and I both thought it shared a similarity in style. It was quite brisk, with good minerality, and made a refreshing aperitif. although perhaps on the young side. While on the subject of Chablis, it was terrible to hear about the hailstorm which hit many of the vineyards a few days ago, just before the harvest, and our thoughts go out to the growers affected.

We moved on to the 2010 Meursault from Vincent Perrin, which is always an enjoyable drop, with good typicity. G and I are more familiar with the 2008 vintage which we think may be slightly heftier, but then 2008 was a great vintage for white burgundy. Guess they can't be like that all the time.

Then came a real show-stopper, this 2011 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er cru En Remilly from Domaine Bouard-Bonnefoy. Comparisons were made to Batard-Montrachet. It had benefited from judicious use of oak and just generally came across as expensive and ambitious with a lovely weight and richness. I'm delighted to see that I have some of the 2012 in my cellar! We thought the 2011 was drinking now but might benefit from another year, which suggests that waiting five years is the way forward for these wines.

Of the reds, first we tried a 2011 Monthelie 1er cru Les Riottes from Florent Garaudet, which was very pure with juicy, clean fruit and showed that these wines need time to open up and reach their full potential. Then a 2010 Beaune 1er cru Les Reversees from Jean-Claude Rateau, which was a lovely, elegant expression of Beaune, but might be even better in a couple of years' time.

Finally, we tried this 2011 Morey-St-Denis from Domaine Audiffred. This was astonishing, with a nose of passionfruit, blackcurrant and possibly even mango. Normally I associate Morey with black forest gateau, but this was more like a tropical fruit pavlova. It was quite remarkable and we loved it.

Fascinating stuff and merci to ACC for sharing them with us!

Recent drinking round-up, 2nd August

No particular theme today, just a recap of what we have been drinking over the past couple of weeks.

This was a 2013 Beaujolais "Champ Blanc" made by Julien Merle, which G picked up in Triovino in Lyon for around 19 euros. It's a natural wine and we served it slightly chilled. I found it delicious and pure with vibrant fruit, while G described it as "essence of Gamay". At 12.5% we could be confident there'd be no hangover the next day either.

Last Sunday, ACC joined us for dinner and we were treated to some leftovers of this Chablis 2012 Grand Cru Les Preuses, from Domaine Nathalie and Gilles Fevre, Obviously this is very young, but it was already drinking nicely, probably because it had been open for a little while. I was struck by how elegant and pure it was. The use of oak is judicious at this domaine.

Then, I was excited to drink this white which I'd been saving up for a suitable occasion - a Bourgogne Blanc 2008 from Domaine Roulot. We don't see much Roulot in the UK and I'd never had a white from this domaine before. This bottle cost 39 euros from Antic Wines in Lyon. It didn't disappoint - it was like a baby Meursault with richness but also a lively streak of acidity and an edge which kept it interesting. It was beautifully balanced and drinking very well now. Those 2008 whites are so good.

With the cheeseboard we had this Bourgogne Rouge 1993 from Domaine Bernard Delagrange, which I believe ACC had picked up in the bargain bucket at Magnum in Beaune. This had survived remarkably well and went down a treat.

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending a wine tasting hosted by the Burgundy Portfolio at the Gallery Magda Danysz on Charlotte Street. This was very entertaining as we were given a tour of the remarkable space, which included a secret cinema hidden away downstairs, and were served a different wine in each part of the gallery. The wines were generally old favourites, but the white Pernand-Vergelesses from Pascal Clement was showing particularly well on this occasion.

On Friday, G and I tried out this Greek red, which was part of a recent order from the Wine Society. It was described in their notes as being like a Cote de Nuits burgundy, and I could see where they were coming from, as it had dark red berry fruits. I quite enjoyed it, but at 14% alcohol it was on the heavy side. G was not so keen and refused to drink it, but relented the following evening and helped me polish off the remainder. The fact that it was better on night 2 suggests that it's probably too young, but at £19.50 a pop I'm unlikely to rush out and buy any more with a view to keeping it for 3 years.

As an aside, I'm slightly miffed with the Wine Soc at the moment, because they seem to have discontinued the Norman Hardie Canadian pinot noir which I had from them some time ago. I didn't write about it on here at the time, as I was planning to get some more and take it to an SPNS dinner and didn't want to spoil the surprise, but I thought it was excellent, and now I can't get hold of any more. Grrr! However, what the Wine Society does do very well is sherry, and I ordered a little mixed 6 pack last week.

We opened this Cayetano del Pino Palo Cortado last night and I was hugely impressed with it. It's made by Sanchez Romate who always seem to do a good job. It smelled almost sweet on the nose, but it's actually dry, nutty and complex. At £14.50 a bottle it's a snip, and I'll be back for more in due course.

Also in the picture is the first course of G's "Superfood Supper" which he treated me to last night. I usually do the cooking so this was a nice change.

The second course involved mushrooms, peppers and tomatoes, and we opened my penultimate bottle of Meursault 2008 from Vincent Perrin.

This has been a spectacular wine, and I've enjoyed it very much. It's drinking beautifully at the moment and is everything you want in a Meursault.

The main course was a delightful crab and dill concoction, along with avocado. We used to eat a lot of crab on toast, but since the grill has now packed up due to too many vast hunks of beef being roasted in the oven, and in an attempt to lower the carb-count, this was an excellent alternative.

Next up, an assiette de fruits. Super-fruits, in fact.

Finally, the best super-food of all - cheese! G had been to La Fromagerie and got some Roquefort, Comte, a Banon, a Charollais and an Ami du Chambertin to go alongside the dregs of a Pecorino and a Valency from the 'Trose. There was so much that two cheeseboards had to be pressed into action. I hasten to add that we only had very small amounts of each, served with some Peter's Yard artisinal sourdough crispbread things, which have been the breakout hit of the summer.

To accompany this, we had a half bottle of Coufis Vin Doux from Chapoutier, which had the vintage (2008) on the cork. I really enjoyed this - it wasn't too sweet, and had lovely apricot flavours. Looking it up on the Chapoutier website, I'm not at all surprised to see that it's made from the viognier grape. I'm not sure why it's not allowed to be called a Rhone wine - perhaps it's from the wrong side of the tracks or something. This too came from Triovino and G thinks it cost about 18 euros. I'd certainly have it again, and find myself fervently wishing that Triovino had a branch in London.

That brings us all up to date. It's already beginning to feel slightly autumnal here and I've pencilled in a trip to Burgundy in November. I've been hearing good things about the wines of the 2014 vintage so am looking forward to trying them myself!

Birthday dinner, Saturday 11th July

It's always great when your birthday falls on a Saturday. However, mine did not get off to the best start when the party people at McCann Erickson, whose office is just next to my block of flats, suddenly decided to make use of the powerful speakers which had been installed on their balcony for their outdoor cinema season, at 12.20 in the morning. My neighbours and I were treated to 20 minutes of this at top volume, which under different circumstances I might have quite enjoyed.

Fortunately the day improved and in the evening G came round for dinner at mine. After a bracing pre-prandial negroni, we cracked on with my birthday present from him: this bottle of Chateau Montrose 1990.

There is a story here, which I've told before, but will tell again as the context is important. When we were staying at the Crown in Southwold on my 22nd birthday, G spotted the 1970 Montrose on the bin end list and it went down in history as the "Montrose Moment" i.e. the moment I really began to understand what fine wine is all about. On discovering that a friend had some stocks of the 1990 vintage, G thought he'd attempt to recreate the experience 20 years on. The only difference being that 1990 is renowned as a great vintage and this was a very expensive bottle of wine, even at a prix d'ami.

Promising level...

Glossy!

We decanted it just before we drank it, and all was well. It was a wonderful, glossy dark colour. I don't drink much claret, and when I do it's usually Latour, cue sound of tumbrils rolling up outside the door but this was very different. It was very smooth, succulent and had a richness to it that came as a welcome surprise. We found ourselves using words such as "voluptuous" and "hedonistic", and noted that it didn't seem very blackcurranty, but the fruit was more like mirabelle plums. It was drinking perfectly at the age of 25 and went down very easily - once I'd made my notes, we didn't feel the need to sit there thinking about it too hard, it was sensual rather than intellectual, and therefore in some ways rather like a Burgundy! G will report back to his friend that it's good to go, no point in hanging around.

Massive piece of rosbif

We had it alongside a mighty fine piece of roasted sirloin on the bone which I'd got from the Ginger Pig earlier in the day, and some roast potatoes, naturally.

Ultimate cheeseboard

And to finish, we had some cheese. For once, I braved La Fromagerie with its notorious Door of Shoulder-Dislocation, as I hadn't been there in ages. I have to admit I was impressed with the range on offer. The Ami du Chambertin was particularly excellent and lasted us till Thursday, and I'm very likely to be going back for more soon.

We polished off the vieux marc from Lyon, and that was that. Another year down. Enormous thanks to G for such a generous and thoughtful birthday present. Now, about 2035...