Wines in Restaurants, Part 1: The Seafood Restaurant, St Andrews

Wine and food matching is a skill, no doubt about that, but often bastardised by back labels on bottles and amateurish tasting notes. “A perfect match for roasts and grills”, “a perfect accompaniment to meat and cheese” and one of my favourites, “Enjoy this wine with friends and a woodfired pizza” – on a Sauvignon Blanc?! The questions you then have include “roast and grilled what?” Does a grilled haddock go with this Chilean Cabernet better or worse than a grilled sirloin? Also, “if a wine is recommended to be drunk with friends and a woodfired pizza”, will it be terrible if I’m drinking it on my own, in a bedsit with a extra cheesy meat feast from Pizza Hut?

Go to a restaurant however, particularly where a producer’s wine is being shown and there is a fixed menu, and you would expect things to be spot on. All the flavour components of the meal should compliment the wine and vice versa. If you want to make a food and wine pairing sing and impress all the guests, the easiest way to do it is to take the wines, get the chef and sommelier to taste the wines, and design a dish to match the wine being drunk with that course. So often, however, it would appear that the combinations are so far out that you begin to wonder if the chef had actually tried the wine before constructing the meal, and if he did, it is more than likely he had just smoked half a pack of Lambert & Butler before his shift. I’ve had some terrible pairings before. A few years ago champagne paired with halibut was fine, but the bed of vanilla mashed potatoes totally messed it all up, creating an abomination of flavours rivalled only by the deep fried Mars Bar.

I recently went to the Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews for a dinner which was to show the wines of Paul Jaboulet Aine. I’ve written about these wines before, so won’t go into them now, but instead of a tailored meal, this dinner was comprised of dishes from the main menu. Nothing was created specially for the evening, just a selection of dishes picked perfectly, and I mean perfectly, by the sommelier and the chef. They totally nailed it with a series of dishes that not only were delicious, but improved, and were improved by, the wines.

The first wine was the 2008 Cotes du Rhone Parallele 45 Blanc which went superbly with a Lemon and Coriander Pittenweem Crab with sweetcorn puree and tomato fondue. Initially I had thought that the sweeter aroma from the wine would dominate the subtle flavours of the crab, but when eaten with the tomato fondue everything fell into place. The sweeter flavour from the tomato went well with the similar aromas of the wine, and the mildly oily texture of the wine balanced out the creamy crab.

Moving onto a smoked haddock rarebit with creamed leeks and pancetta and a wholegrain mustard dressing, this needed a bigger wine. And it got it with the 2006 Crozes Hermitage Mules Blanche. The smoky oak on the wine hit the spot with the fish, and the wines vegetal hints matched the leek flavours and spice of the mustard. The fish was moist with crisp edges which gave a meaty element that complimented the fuller, bolder wine perfectly.

Then came the one part that could have screwed the whole thing up. A fish dish with red wine, the 2006 Crozes Hermitage Domaine de Thalabert. As Jaboulet is a Rhone producer, you have to show their red wines at such a dinner. The team at the Seafood Restaurant could have played it safe and stuck on a bit of meat, venison, beef, anything really, but instead we were given a grilled fillet of Halibut with parmentier potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, oxtail (see, a little meat!) and a garlic puree reduction.

You noticed garlic immediately, but with a rich, herby element on the wine counter balancing with that element well. The fish was lovely, and not overpowered by the red fruit from the wine, but obviously the oxtail helped give the dish a bit of weight, to match the darker secondary flavours of the wine. Although there was a little too much tannin on the wine, which age would have softened, this was an excellent paring.

A cheese course with the 2004 Hermitage La Petite Chapelle was fun. A selection of five cheeses with five accompaniments was presented. Mull Cheddar with almonds, Criffle and honeycomb, Scottish Brie and salad with truffle oil, Strathton Blue and Quince jelly and finally Lanark Blue and pickled walnut were the choices we had and we compared them to the wine, with, in my opinion, the Criffle and honeycomb was the perfect combination to match the wine. But what this course did was take a ‘serious’ wine and make it fun! A group of fully paid up wine buffs playing with their food over some lovely wine must have been a sight to see for our fellow diners. It was a great choice.

Finally the 2007 Muscat de Beaumes de Venise La Chant de Griolles came with vanilla and honey poached pear with liquorice crème brulee, liquorice sponge and Frangelico foam. I don’t like this wine, never have, and the thought of a liquorice crème brulee filled me with dread. This course however was fabulous. The pear went well with the lemony flavours from the glass, and the wine’s spice and honey flavours worked with the vanilla element. But the harsher elements of the wine, which normally puts me off it, were matched with the darker flavours of the liquorice crème brulee and liquorice sponge. On their own, the two components were not brilliant, but together you had such a good match! Throw in the pear to the liquorice and wine and you had a culinary delight.

A lot of ‘sommeliers’ are nothing more than wine waiters. They may have a fancy job title, but they don’t do a very good job and you might as well pick your wines with ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’. The Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews have talented wine staff, and great chefs. And they show it isn’t difficult to get food and wine matching right, you just need to hire the right staff. After all, it was the Seafood Restaurant that served me vanilla mash!

Part two of this article will look further at the problems of the restaurant wine list, with examples of the good, the bad and the totally hopeless

By Peter Wood with 4 comments

Kick starting the economy or kicking the producers?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer raised duty on alcohol by 2% today. It could have been a lot worse, but within minutes the various alcohol industries in the UK were up in arms about it, saying their respective sectors would be hit by the duty increase.

The Whisky industry, usually first off the blocks to object, described it as "a blow to the industry that comes at the worst possible time". The British Beer and Pub Association said it was "a death warrent" for pubs. One of these I agree with, one is silly.

Whilst this was a duty rise that wasn't wanted by the trade, it won't really effect you as a consumer. A four pence duty rise on wine, 13p on spirits and a penny on a pint of beer really isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, as you aren't going to quibble over a penny for your pint of Guinness.

But it will effect UK businesses. Retailers and pubs are fine. Despite the complaints from these two sectors of the market, they really don't have anything to worry about. If a retailer has to put up the price of a particular bottle of wine, and this makes it too expensive for the customer, the punter will just buy a different, cheaper bottle of wine. Even if a penny on a pint of beer will translate to five pence added to the sale price, people will still buy as many pints as they would normally do. Five pence per beer is not a massive amount on an evening out, even if you drink 20 pints, as that still amounts to only a pound extra, and if you can afford to buy 20 pints in the first place, you can afford an extra quid! This extra certainly isn't going to result in pubs across the land boarding up their windows, so the Beer and Pub Association is bein a little melodramatic!

So who will be affected by this? Simple really, producers. If you are a whisky producer Scotland, you have to increase your prices by 15p per bottle. Supermarkets will not accept that, and demand that producers absorb the increase in duty. Then smaller retailers will see that the supermarkets are undercutting them and demand a similar discount. Take a company like Diageo that produces everything from Lagavulin to Smirnoff in the UK. They are being hit in a huge way, but are fortunate that they are big enough for it not to ruin their business. The same cannot be said for smaller operations who might not go bust but will certainly have a few sleepless nights and may have to lay some people off.

Darling is taxing the one group of companies that this country needs more of to kick start our economy and get us out of this recession; producers. Not exactly the best way to stimulate the economy...

By Peter Wood with No comments

Wine: Health update of the week

After learning that red wine can make you amorous, we learn this week that it can now make you overweight. According to the UK government, makes a change from it being the French, the average UK drinker consumes 2000 calories every month from alcohol, roughly a day's calorie intake!

Ladbrokes will be taking bets on what will be next month's health scare involving wine, Impotence leading the form with 7/4 odds, and 2/1 on the likelihood of the report on the illness originating from France!

By Peter Wood with 1 comment

A winemaker's diary by Andy Cook

I work in the South West of France, in the Roussillon. It’s a wild country with strong sunshine, fierce winds and inhospitable landscapes. But the wines are great! I work the vines in Collioure, Banyuls and Côtes du Roussillon, and I help make wines in the respective wineries, as well as producing small quantities of my own wines.

Spring is already stirring in the vines here….buds are bursting and there are 4-5 leaves opening on some of these. This is a sure sign that we must finish any pruning there is to be done,, and get the vineyard tidied up so that budbreak continues steadily.
We already have temperatures of 27 centigrade so it looks like this year could be a hot one!

Pruning is a time-consuming process. The considerable growth of all but the core trunk is cut back. So last year’s growth is removed, apart from 2 buds at strategic locations on the vine which will produce this year’s canes, and therefore grapes. We leave between 6 and 10 buds per plant (which we will later thin out depending on how many actually take). The prunings must then be cleaned up and either burned or disposed of (the French have a verb for this specific action – ‘sarmenter’ – for such a vague language they can be very exacting sometimes). If the vines are trellised – which here we use to protect against the fierce wind and give more even canopy distribution – then this process alone can take days for a hectare.

As the vine starts to grow again, so do the other plants in the vineyard. Most of these are unwanted and we have spent a lot of time this last month getting rid of them. The steep Schistes slopes around here make mechanisation virtually impossible, so we cannot get a tractor into any of our vineyards around Collioure and Banyuls. This means ploughing in weeds is not an option, although there are some vineyards where we can use a horse and plough (and skilled ploughman!) to do this job. So we handweed, and also use some herbicides. Obviously we try to keep these to a minimum. This use of these sprays is really the only reason we are not fully organic.

Next month we will replant sections of some vineyards that have been neglected over the years. One large vineyard we acquired this year has had a bulldozer through it to deep rip and flatten the ground,….we will plant 2000 new Grenache vines here next week. The vines need a small hole, plenty of water, and sunshine. Then in 3 years they will give us our first crop…..it really is a game of patience growing grapes.

In the winery we are getting wines ready for bottling. This means tasting, assessing and assembling dozens of barrels into their respective lots. We really do try to keep any fining, filtering or general ‘messing about’ with our beloved wines to a minimum, so we try to get all this blending done well in advance. That way the wines can settle naturally in the tanks and be gently drawn off for bottling, leaving sediment at the bottom of the tank.

There’s a lot to keep on top of at the moment, and managing your time well is a most important skill when growing and making wine. There are never enough hours in the day to get everything done that you want to…..

Andy Cook spent the best part of a decade in the UK retail trade, before learning how to make wine in New Zealand. Now living and working in France where he started his wine career as a winemaker's assistant. He has agreed to contribute regular updates on what is going on in the vineyards he works in.

Cook Wines Website

By Peter Wood with 2 comments

Wine Web Watch... Smirnoff Teapartay Advert

By Peter Wood with No comments

Bad Wine & Striking Miners

I want to assassinate Arthur Scargill. Twenty five years after the miners strike, where the Iron lady’s intelligent, if brutal force, met in battle with the Hammer and Sickle ideals of the National Union of Miners (NUM), I am still bitter with the left wing union leader Scargill.

In the summer of 1984, I turned six and I remember that summer with nothing but fond memories. Walking in the West Yorkshire countryside with my father, gathering blackberries and rosehips, constantly wearing shorts and in the evening listening to the radio whilst my mother knitted and my father made home made wine. It sounds like a summer from the fifties rather than the eighties.

Unlike that home made wine however, I matured and read about what happened during 1984, and what hell my parents went through. In the early eighties Margeret Thatcher, mindful that the trade unions had brought down Ted Heath’s government six years previously, passed an act that stopped the dependents of strikers receiving ‘urgent needs payments’, and realising that the miners were going to be to her what the car industry was to the previous administrations, started stockpiling coal. When she announced that 20,000 miners were going to be made redundant to save 30,000 other jobs, the NUM called a strike. But Mrs T had, some would say viciously, the families of the strikers in her artillery. By preventing them getting emergency hardship payments, she hoped to put pressure on those striking by making their families starve.

Realising this, militant unionists started attacking the homes, pets and families of men who broke the picket line, which resulted in those wanting to work staying at home for fear of their family’s safety. This bolstered the number of official strikers, and meant that my father was forced to stay away from work, which meant we fell foul of Thatcher’s act and we too went hungry.

So my summer with my family was due to my parents going through the most difficult times imaginable. Looking back I realised that we gathered wild plants for food because we had no money, hell, I was eating nettle soup twenty years before celebrity chefs made it trendy! My mother knitted because we needed warm clothes for the winter, because we couldn’t afford heat and I wore shorts because I was six and, like every six year old, I would fall over a lot and skin on your knees was cheaper to fix than long trousers.

Although I loved 1984 and remember it fondly, my experience of that year has been influenced by my subsequent education of the factors that caused my dad to be off work. Now, instead of me looking back on that summer with the childlike bliss of a summer with my family, I see it as an adult filled with anger for what happened to his parents.

Which is why, at a recent lunch, was confused at, but full of admiration for, a general manager from an antipodean vineyard. This man was very likeable and quite a character, so all the guests took a shine to him. We tasted through his wines and some were good, some not so, but one wine stood out from the rest as everyone in the room, unfortunately, hated it.

He explained that this was a labour of love for the company, that they enjoyed making it, enjoyed drinking it and that it brought them all pleasure, as did the summer of ’84 for me. However our visible dislike for this wine showed him the grim reality of the situation, in that they had produced a ghastly product. We tried to put a positive spin on things with comments like “it is better with the food” or “it is opening up well”, but he knew that we were sugar coating the truth, trying to protect him from the unpleasantness that we were experiencing. All of a sudden I, and my fellow diners, were my parents, building a wall of defence around a person, and in this case a company, that we didn’t want knowing the truth.

But then he said something. “this wine is not commercially, or critically, successful”. He knew that this wine was hated, and not just by us, but by everyone. The whole company knew that this wine that they loved was rubbish, and they didn’t really care, and still gained joy from it. And this is something that hit home, hard.

It has always been in the back of my mind that my parents may have felt some sort of guilt for that summer twenty five years ago, and that although they tried to cover things up for my brother and I, the reality was that I knew what was going on, even at six years old. I may not have known the facts that led to the miners strike, but I knew we were poor, and why, I knew that food was scarce and I knew my parents sacrificed a lot for us. But I still consider that summer as the best one of my life.

I got to spend two whole months with my entire family and we struggled together but we took joy in each other’s company, and who nowadays can say that? People barely have two weeks a year for their family, but I had them twenty four seven, for eight weeks. Things may have been totally crap, but I gained joy from spending time with my parents, just like this other family, thousands of miles from where I type this, gain joy from this terrible wine. I wouldn't change that year for anything, and I hope, even though I'll never buy a bottle, that they keep making this wine.

By Peter Wood with No comments

Naff Drink Makeover: Advocaat

Once upon a time a load of Dutch folk lived in Suriname and made a liquor made of avocados. When they returned to their home, they realised that avocados were a little thin on the ground and so made a drink with thickened egg yolk. And so Advocaat, as we know it now, was born.

This bright yellow liquid has been the mainstay of the ‘70’s generation for the past thirty odd years. Snowballs (advocaat and lemonade) have been the tipple of choice for grannies since the decade where everything was brown, orange and, appropriately enough, yellow.

Fluffy Duck
1 part Advocaat
1 part Creme de Cacao
7Up

Fill a hi ball glass 1/4 full with crushed ice, pour in the creme de cacao and advocaat. Add in the 7Up to the top of the glass and stir.
From Drinks Mixer

Creme Egg Shooter
1/2 shot Creme de Cacao brown
1/2 shot Advocaat
1/2 shot Amarula Creme

Layer the three liquids together in a shot glass over the back of a spoon.
From In the Spirit


Japonaise
1 shot Advocaat
1/2 shot Kirsch
2 teaspoons Grenadine
Soda Water

Fill a hi ball glass with ice. Add the Advocaat, Kirsch and Grenadine. Stir well and top up with Soda water.
From Alex's Cocktail Recepies

Next Time: Campari

By Peter Wood with No comments

Decanter's April Fools Joke

This is good! It is so absurd that the French could have actually passed this law but a press release on April 1st would be a touch daft! Click here to see the article.

By Peter Wood with No comments