Sweet as a Bunch
POSTED ON 18/10/2014Recognising that most wine drinkers buy their wines in supermarkets, this column doesn’t indulge in gratuitous supermarket-bashing. Nonetheless, with a collection of wines based on new additions to their ranges. The Bunch, representing six of the country’s most established independent wine merchants, showed that they, and many other independents, have a consistent nose in front of the supermarket pack when it comes to exploring new territory, on quality, and occasionally even on value. So let the Pandora’s box open.
Riesling Renaissance: Location, Location, Location
POSTED ON 11/10/2014Is there any greater food-friendly white wine in the world that’s appreciated less than dry German riesling? The time-honoured prejudices are a rollcall of shame: the bland legacy of liebfraumilch, the non-rieslings of laski and olasz riesling, the complexities of German labelling, the battery acid wines of yesteryear and the archaic view of German riesling as granny’s favourite sweet wine.
Sake with your Oyster, your Burger and your Stilton, sir?
POSTED ON 04/10/2014Philip Harper, Japan’s only British sake master brewer, came to London last month to conduct a tasting of his Tamagawa sake with British cheeses from Paxton & Whitfield: a Shepton Mallet goat’s, Paxton’s aged cheddar and Half Baby Stilton. Tousled and Dylan-esque, Philip is an iconoclast. In his talk he defied two conventions. First he demonstrated that sake’s umami content (the fifth taste, meaning, basically, savoury), makes it a good match for cheese.
Riesling Renaissance
POSTED ON 01/10/2014Top white burgundy apart, dry German Riesling is the greatest, most food-friendly dry white wine in the world, yet it remains under-appreciated. While Germany would like its greatest dry Rieslings to be better known, the rest of the world’s wine industry is more than happy for German wine to have a hard time exporting its liquid gold overseas. According to the Nahe producer, Martin Tesch, only half with tongue in cheek: ‘selling Riesling in England borders on an extreme sport, like underwater polo’.
