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Food and Wine Matching: A 1950s view
February 23rd, 2010

My last post briefly mentioned André Simon, one of the great wine writers of the 20th Century. Born in 1877 in a small street “between Brasserie Lipp and Les Deux Magots” in Paris, Simon was a wine merchant, historian, journalist and bon viveur. A few weeks ago I stumbled across his “The Art of Good Living” in a second hand book shop. The 1951 edition of a book first published in 1929, it has some wonderful rules regarding food and wine matching.

The book is a window in to another world, one where ducks were served a la presse in grandiose hotel rooms and washed down with vintage Champagne. A world where gourmands in training needed to be told that “Turkey, Goose, Guinea Fowl and Pigeon are really no better than Cygnets and Peacocks… one should be content to meet them occasionally at some friend’s dinner table without troubling to order them when one is the host.” I’ll remember that advice next Christmas.

I love it – as I’d love any book that stated so definitively: “With ham Champagne is best”.

My favourite suggestions of food and wine matching are in the game section. Under a subtitle of Grouse we are told “There is no finer bird in the world, gastronomically speaking, than a young Grouse during the last weeks in August or the first weeks in September, just plain roasted with no other sauce than its gravy. A red Graves, Domaine de la Chevalier or La Mission Hau Brion, for choice, or a Graves of St Emilion such as Chateau Cheval Blanc, can be as enjoyable with a young grouse as a Musigny or a Chambertin”. If you can’t stretch to Cheval Blanc and Grouse (it will only be a few hundred quid for your supper) then you’ll have to trade down to roast quail with which “Fourtet, Canon, Pavie or any other good St Emilion, are very acceptable”. A budget dinner if ever there was one.

Penny pinchers should definitely avoid the steak as recommended with a Grilled Fillet of Beef a la Maitre d’Hotel, au Cresson, Colbert or Bercy are none other than Lafite, Margaux, Latour or Haut Brion. The then second growth Mouton-Rothschild is only deemed good enough for Roast Sirloin a la Anglaise. I wonder if Simon revised his opinion after 1973 and deemed later vintages of Mouton good enough for a grilled fillet.

The white wine recommendations are even more enlightening and show how much tastes have changed over the last sixty years or so. The reds Simon reserves for the finest dishes in the repertoire are all, more or less, the most prestigious and expensive today. Although I suspect your average 21st Century wine merchant-cum-journalist struggles to drink quite as well as Simon did. When it comes to whites, Simon ranks the dry wines of Germany at the very top of his vinous class system.

Basic whites, he tell us,  such as those from Graves and Anjou and should be served with simple cuisine such as Moules Mariniere or cold lobster. With better wines such as a good Moselle or Chablis and one “might try the skill of the chef higher” by selecting Truite au bleu or Merlan a la Dieppoise (was whiting really better than a cold lobster back then?) If, however, “the occasion warrants Champagne, or a really high-class Hock or White Burgundy” then you need an aristocratic dish to match: Sole Archiduc or Turbot a la Grand Duc.

It is wonderful to see Hock – the German wines of the Rheingau, Rheinhessen and Pfalz – get top billing. A hundred years ago these wines sold for higher prices than those the first growths of Bordeaux. Now they go for a song in comparison despite so many of them being exactly as Simon describes them “fine wines… full of flavour and breed and free from sugar”. More on these next time.

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A Tale of Two Tims: Wine Writing in the Dock
February 18th, 2010

“Think, for a moment, of an almost paper-white glass of liquid, just shot with greeny-gold, just tart on your tongue, full of wild flower scents and spring-water freshness. And think of a burnt-umber fluid, as smooth as syrup in the glass, as fat as butter to smell and sea-deep with strange flavours. Both are wine.

 Wine is grape-juice. Every drop of liquid filling so many bottles has been drawn out of the ground by the roots of a vine. All these different drinks have at one time been sap in a stick. It is the first of many strange and some – despite modern research – mysterious circumstances which go to make wine not only the most delicious, but the most fascinating, drink in the world.”

These aren’t my words, of course, but the opening to Hugh Johnson’s seminal tome Wine, a book that is now over four decades old. Those two paragraphs are perhaps as good any as ever put down by a wine writer – a species now widely regarded to be on the endangered list.

There has been a lot written over the last ten days or so about the future of wine writing. Much of it has stemmed from the Kings Cross HQ of the Guardian Media Group which first of all headlined an article by Oliver Thring about Tim Hanni, with whom Bibendum are working at the moment, “Wine critics’ advice is unchallenged bunk”, and then announced that Tim Atkin’s column in The Observer was to be cut down to a short shopping list squeezed in between the recipes and the gardening advice.

Not a good week to be a wine writer.

The Observer’s culling of Tim A’s column is presumably the result of the powers that be assuming that not enough of us are interested. They might be surprised to find close to 1000 people have since joined a Facebook group to Save the Wine Column.

Wine’s complexity and variety lends itself to writing and to reading. Few other consumables have the vocabulary and the body of literature that wine has inspired. The great Andre Simon noted that the poets of every country have sung the praises of wine. Hugh Johnson, in the paragraph that follows the two at the top of this post, wrote that wine “would not be so fascinating if there were not so many different kinds… the whole reason that wine is worth study is its variety.”

I couldn’t agree more. The more you read about wine, study it and involve yourself in it, the better it becomes. Wine is an inexhaustible subject and even a little learning can go a long way to enhancing your enjoyment of what is in your glass. The Observer’s decision to drastically reduce Tim A’s article is a sad one. A short shopping list does no service to the subject, the writer or the reader. They may as well restrict Nigel Slater to a solitary recipe or Eddie Butler to naming the result from the Millennium Stadium but not the story behind that score. Few people read about wine for a simple recommendation of what to pick up at Tesco’s, we read about it because we are interested in it. Amongst all the tweets, blogs and comments on this subject, Simon Woods hit the nail on the head when he wrote that one of the most important jobs of a wine writer is to inspire. You can’t do that in three short tasting notes.

However, we wine lovers are the minority. There are many more, as Hugh Johnson knew, “who do not care for it, and who think it no more than a nuisance that a wine list has so many names on it”. These people are alienated by the same complexity of wine that draws people like me in. They don’t want to be inspired or to study wine’s intoxicating variety. They want to get intoxicated on something they like, at a price that suits them. People like this will never read a wine column, long or short.

Our survey with Tim H is all about finding new ways to communicate with these consumers. It is not about dumbing down, it is about recognising that a huge number people switch off when we talk about wine and about finding a way of communicating with them that does interest them. With a bit of luck, we can encourage them to try an Albarino or Gruner Veltliner rather than just automatically reaching for the cheapest Pinot Grigio on the shelf.

This isn’t an either/or scenario – there is a need for both Tims. Our work with Tim H is about reaching out to an audience the wine industry has so far failed to engage with. Tim A and other wine writers are needed to inspire, educate and inform those of us who are already converted to the cause.

Both have an important part to play in celebrating and promoting the beauty of what Johnson calls “not only the most delicious, but the most fascinating, drink in the world.”

Find out more about the taste profile survey we created with Tim Hanni

Join the Save the Wine Column group on Facebook

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Blokes Eat Beef
February 9th, 2010

It was all in the interest of fairness and equality. If the fairer half of London’s foodie blogosphere could hold an event all about the goodness of steak, then so could the hairier half. Blokes Eat Beef was the reactionary brainchild of uber-blogger Simon Majumdar – an evening of testosterone and barely cooked flesh with a side order of bearnaise. How could I refuse?

The evening was devastatingly simple. 25 or so blokes turned up at top London steakhouse Goodman and worked their way through 36kg of A-List beef, two sides of the world’s finest smoked salmon, a pile of very aptly named stinking bishop and even a few slices of cheesecake. In between time we were graced by the presence of some of the people who had farmed, aged, butchered and cooked our dinner. It was an honour to sit and listen to these passionate people talk as I stuffed my face with another slice of 45 day dry aged barley finished Irish Black Angus.

The menu chalked up on a board read like an Atkins dieter’s wet dream and before long the words had materialised into four enormous slabs of cow on a table in front of us. Like good cavemen, we beat our chests and let out a primal roar of approval.

Then we were told that was only half of what we had to eat. The roars died down a bit. Was it possible we had over done it? Was it possible we would all die of protein poisoning on the Victoria Line home? There was only one way to find out…

The main bit of the meal was a beefy blind tasting. We knew what the four breeds we were eating were but not which was which. Armed with some theory from Goodman’s passionate head chef John Cadieux we set about trying to identify which was which, and which we liked best.

I desperately wanted my favourite to be one of the British cows. It’s the patriot in me. I’m not sure I like the idea of souped-up American beef: bovine GIs that are over fed, over aged and over here. Who wants government-approved corn-fed Yankee steaks when we can have our own beef fed on good old fashioned Scottish or Cumbrian grass?

Well, me apparently.

Somewhat inevitably, the USDA was my favourite. Our first USDA steak was a mite overdone but was still juicy, sweet and tender; gamey even. If it was this good when medium-plus I guessed it would be superb when closer to rare and a second steak proved it. It was as close to perfect a steak as I can imagine, and the fact it stood out against such hot competition was testament to its quality. No wonder Goodman sold 12.5 tonnes of the stuff last year.

What else did I learn apart from the fact I like posh American meat?A lot. Here’s my top 10 #blokeseatbeef facts cobbled together from my notes that went downhill rather rapidly as the evening went on:

1. They corn feed cattle specifically to up the fat content in the meat. Basically if you ate nothing but corn for a month, your ribeye would have some great marbling too

2. More marbling = longer ageing potential. Hence the USDA stuff can be hung for longer than the Scottish Grass fed beef

3. Really, really long aged beef “smells like a corpse” and the Goodman chefs can’t help but gag when cutting it up. Think about that next time you order your New York strip medium-rare

4. The firmer the meat is when it is cold, the more marbling there will be because the fat hardens in the fridge – obvious really

5. Goodman get a tonne of meat delivered most weeks and can hold 2.5 tonnes in their meat store

6. I am incredibly greedy

7. Beef farming can be a bit like wine – the chap from the Lakes who supplied the wonderful belted Galloway talked about working with farmers on a long term basis to guarantee higher prices, encourage quality over quantity and ensure the final product is as good as it could be. Winemakers from Beaune to the Barossa do similar things with grape growers

8. The charming Frank Hederman makes the best smoked salmon ever – it tastes almost like lightly beech smoked sashimi. Grand Cru smoked salmon if ever there was such a thing

9. Catena Malbec is a brilliant accompaniment to steak

10. If you eat over a kilo of top class beef you will have a horrendous night’s sleep and not feel the need to eat anything else for at least 24 hours

Huge thanks to everyone who made Blokes Eat Beef happen – the team at Goodman led by GM David Strauss, Simon Majumdar, the farmers, Frank Hederman, Bibendum’s very own Valeria who popped in to talk eloquently about Catena, La Fromagerie for the cheese. It was a top night – educational, tasty and most importantly, manly. When are we doing it again?

[Edit. If you want some serious meaty photos follow Goodman's Head Chef John on Twitter]

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Tips from our February Sale
February 3rd, 2010

Our annual February Sale kicked off yesterday. We never do a January Sale, partly because we are always so busy with our Burgundy & Annual Tastings but also because, well, we like to be a bit different.

You can see all the wines online or, if you prefer, download a pdf of the brochure. The Sale will run until Monday 15th.

With over 180 wines included, there is a lot to wade through so for those of you looking for some tips or ideas, here are a few bottles that I will be spending my own hard earned cash on. Prices are per bottle, inc VAT.

Petaluma Croser Brut 2006 – £16.06 / £11.08

A top Aussie fizz from the brilliant winemaking team at Petaluma. Toasty and full-bodied without being OTT – a great alternative to Champagne.

Mitchelton Airstrip Marsanne/Roussanne/Viognier 2006 – £14.30 / £9.67

Rhone Ranger’s Mitchelton specialise in aromatic whites like this beauty which melds floral. peachy fruit with a rich, almost creamy texture. Perfect roast pork material.

St Nicolas de Bourgueil Domaine de la Cotellaraie 2008 – £11.24 / £7.99

Loire reds aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. They can be a bit light and herbal but I think they are some of the most underrated wines in France. Made from Cabernet Franc, this is fresh and bright with crunchy blackcurrant fruit.

Cotes du Rhone St Cosme 2007 – £10.22 / £7.52

2007 was an epic vintage in the Rhone and St Cosme is a top producer – it is a winning combination. Fruity, forward and ready to go now this is a banker for bangers and mash.

Antama Organic Cabernet Sauvignon/Kotsifali 2008 – £10.77 / £7.99

This is a Willie Lebus special – he rates it as one of the unsung heroes in our range. A Greek blend of globetrotting Cabernet and local grape Kotsifali, it is  full of ripe spicy fruit. If you like other Mediterranean reds from Southern Italy or Spain then give this a whirl.

Rosso di Montalcino Castello Banfi 2007 – £15.07 / £7.83

£7.82 is a daft price for a wine this good. A baby Brunello from the Banfi team it is 100% Sangiovese is made in a classic dry-but-fruity Tuscan style. I’m thinking that the homemade pasta and oxtail ragu that I read about on Hollow Legs’ blog this morning would be just the job for this wine.

Happy bargain hunting.

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A few photos from B Times
February 2nd, 2010

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog recently. And that only ever happens when things are crazy busy elsewhere. The last two weeks have raced by in a haze with the end of the Burgundy 2008 campaign, the hustle and bustle of the Bibendum Times tasting and the start of our February Sale. The last two weeks of January are perhaps the busiest of the year here at Bibendum HQ.

Anyway, things have calmed down a little bit now so it will be business as usual here at Random Bottlings. The draft posts are already piling up ready to be published. Look out for some sale tips tomorrow.

In the meantime here’s a few photos of our Big Day Out at the Saatchi Gallery:

See you tomorrow…

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Bibendum Times: One day to go…
January 19th, 2010

After months of build up (we first sat down to talk about the theme way back in the Summer), tomorrow is the day Bibendum Times finally explodes into life down at the Saatchi Gallery. Nearly 200 winemakers will be pouring over 1000 different wines and the RSVP list just gets longer and longer every time we look at it.

Hopefully, by now many of you will have visited the Bibendum Times website and read the newspaper version but now it is almost time to grab a glass and hit the galleries. You can even download a sneak preview of the tasting book. If you are coming along, we’ll be ready and waiting at 9.30 tomorrow morning to welcome you in. I’ll be the uncomfortable looking chap in the slightly-too-small hot pink polo shirt.

I’m still here in the office sorting out a few final things for tomorrow, but most of the team are already down on the Kings Road sorting things out, transforming one of the capital’s leading art galleries into a wine tasting extraordinaire…

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A Weekend Wine (5): Nuits St George 1er Cru Les Saint Georges Henri Gouges 2008
January 15th, 2010

(Burgundy bottles lined up ready to go at RIBA on Tuesday)

(Burgundy bottles lined up ready to go at RIBA on Tuesday)

It hasn’t been easy picking a wine today. In contrast to tasting just one wine last week, this week has been a riot of fine Burgundies and there were plenty of candidates to choose from. Personal Burgundy 2008 favourites include:

St Romain Clos Sous Le Chateau Monopole Domaine Bohrmann
A superb value white from a tiny vineyard in St Romain – crisp and bright with beautiful balance and lively citrussy fruit. It’s already in bottle and in stock, so you can even buy it now and drink it straight away.

Pouilly-Fuisse Cuvee Claude Denogent Domaine Robert-Denogent
Jean-Jacques Robert is the king of Pouilly-Fuisse and his wines are more than a match for top Meursaults that cost a good deal more. This wine is made from nonagenarian vines that give it incredible depth and complexity.

Vosne-Romanee 1er Cru Les Suchots Maison Roche de Bellene
Nicolas Potel has had one hell of a year. He fell out with the owners of his eponymous negociant house, started from almost scratch again from his new base in Beaune and had some serious family health issues to deal with too. Lesser men than Nicky would have crumbled but he has done an amazing job. This Suchots was many tasters’ pick of the three on show – and given that the others were from Grivot and Arnoux that is no mean feat. Rich, juicy and bright with sumptuous tannins and sweet cherry fruit.

(The Gouges line up)

However, my favourite wine was exactly the same as it was in November when we were out in Burgundy tasting from barrels. We always seem to taste one wine on tour that stands head and shoulders above the rest and makes us wonder if it really is from the same vintage as all the others and not a 2005 that has been slipped in to dupe us. This year it was Henri Gouges’ Nuits St-George 1er Cru Les Saint Georges. It is everything I want a young red Burgundy to be: pale, unforced, natural and vivid with deep red fruit framed by crisp acidity and ripe, almost imperceptible tannins. How much is it? Um, it’s not cheap. In fact it is £650 for 12 bottles (with duty and VAT still to be added) but it is bloody good.

Bargain hunters should seek out my final recommendation instead: Bourgogne Rouge Domaine Hudelot-Noellat. This domaine’s 2008s are unbelievably fruity and flattering already and this basic Bourgogne is exactly what inexpensive red Burgundy should be but rarely is: light, delicate, bright and generous. At £50 for 6, it will come in at under a £10 when Mr Darling has had his share. It’s a great buy.

(Nicky Potel on the right talks through his 2008s)

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Burgundy 2008 – The Growers Speak
January 14th, 2010

It was back to RIBA on Tuesday Night for our Burgundy 2008 tasting. As usual the crowds poured in early and the place was buzzing well before the official 6pm opening time. We showed over 80 wines from 21 growers – most of whom were on hand to talk tasters through the wines and the vintage. Luckily for those of you who couldn’t make it, our intrepid reporter Gal was out about with the Flip Video talking to the growers so you didn’t miss out compeltely.

We kick off with Etienne Grivot (Domaine Jean Grivot) who makes it very clear just how difficult a vintage it was for the growers:

Next up is Gregory Gouges of Nuits St-George giants Domaine Henri Gouges on the challenges of going completely organic in 2008:

Finally, some words from the Cote de Beaune with Meursault’s Thierry Matrot:

I’ll post some still photos and recommendations on the blog tomorrow.

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Chilly Chillies – A Wahaca Update
January 12th, 2010

It’s time for an update on the Wahaca Chilli Growing Competition. Way back in September Wahaca challenged Bibendumites to grow some chillies and then use them to devise a devilish recipe to impress chef Thomasina Miers. It hass been a while since the last update and the cold winter weather and Christmas break have taken their toll on some of the competitors….

Liz forgot to find a Guardian Angel to care for her plant before she went away:

Over in Off Trade, Jo is also lamenting the end of an era…

But it’s not all bad news. Kyle’s plant shows that size does matter after all. Must be all the Argento Malbec he feeds it.

Emma’s survived an amazing week snowed in in Hampshire with no power and -8 degrees C temperatures through both day and night for 5 days! No buds sighted as yet, but it is getting stronger each day and is clearly a fighter. One to watch.

Our final contender comes from Liesbeth who is clearly pretty green fingered. It is tall, it has got big leaves, looks strong and is my current favourite for the coveted “First to Fruit” title.

Think your plant is doing better email a photo to btimes@bibendum-wine.co.uk. More updates to follow as the weather warms up.

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A Weekend Wine (4): Rolly Gassmann Pinot Blanc 2004
January 8th, 2010

You may have noticed the snow in the UK this week. Nearly all the front pages of today’s papers show a satellite image of the country looking, as most of them note, like the Isle of White. With the big freeze set to continue for another ten days or so (please go away before the 20th!), it should be the weather for big reds: Chateauneuf du Pape, Aussie Shiraz or a spicy number from the south of Italy.

Primrose Hill yesterday

As it happens, I have only tasted one wine this week – mainly the result of a stinking cold – and that was white. A bottle I picked up from a high street wine shop on the way to a BYO dinner on Tuesday. Depressingly, the wine was guilty of the biggest crime a drink can commit – it was boring.

There is an old saying that life is too short to drink bad wine. Aussie wine legend Len Evans was firm advocate of this philosophy arguing that if you drink a bad wine you have lost the opportunity to maximize your pleasure, it’s like “smashing a good bottle against the wall”. I tend to agree.

The guilty wine was an Alsace Pinot Blanc which I hoped would be a good match for some Vietnamese food at Mien Tay in Battersea (if you haven’t been and live within any sort of easy travelling distance of Clapham Junction then go, go, go!). Now Pinot Blanc may not be the most extroverted of grape varieties but at its best can be a lovely wine: fresh, nutty, appley and creamy with an uncanny ability to flatter a wide range of foods. In the first wine book I ever read Jancis Robinson called it the “please all” grape, although perhaps that was damning it with faint praise. Anyway, this particular one tasted of nothing and that is a disgrace when you are charging £10 a bottle.

It was a far cry from the last Pinot Blanc I tried just before Christmas: Rolly Gassmann’s 2004 Pinot Blanc. Rolly Gassmann’s style is particularly rich balancing residual sugar, acidity and weight of fruit to create wines that have a delicious texture and intensity. The 2004 is singing at the moment and was the star of a mini-horizontal that also included the 2006, 2007 and 2008.

With five years ageing it had developed some extra complexity and depth than its younger siblings. Despite not being oaked it had a creamy edge with notes of poached pears, lemons and spices. Moreover it has the sort of vibrancy, energy and excitement that makes you sit up and go “Wow”.

Rich but beautifully balance it would have been perfect with some of the Vietnamese food I ate on Tuesday (particularly the spiced, honeyed quail dish) but I am thinking that its true calling may be some roast pork. It costs a little bit more than the dud I took to Mien Tay (£2.77 more to be exact) but is several hundred times better.

Next week is a big one here at Bibendum. It kicks off with our Burgundy 2008 Tasting at RIBA on Tuesday and then it is full steam ahead to the Bibendum Times Annual Tasting on the 20th. Watch this space…

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In praise of beer
January 5th, 2010

I love wine. It is quite simply the best drink ever invented. Kudos to the man who first let grape juice ferment then sat down and drank it with a lump of cheese. However, I also love beer. When I say beer, I really mean ale. Real Ale with proper capital letters. Pass me my Christmas jumper and ignore the bits of fried egg in my beard, I am a secret CAMRA supporter.

The recent festive break has given me ample time to indulge in some great wines, but it has also reawakened my love of the great British pub and great British ale. A day spent walking a few miles up the coast to a cosy pub with four or five ales on draught is far from a day wasted. In these tough times for pubs and brewers, it is a pleasure to support those that are doing a fantastic job.

Two pubs I have to mention are the Fisherman’s Tavern in Broughty Ferry, just up the Tay from Dundee, and the Barrels Ale House in Berwick upon Tweed. Both are superb places with immaculately kept beer that serve their community well. I’d gladly have either just round the corner from where I live. I especially like the fact that Barrels goes from an old man’s boozer at lunchtime to a renowned music venue at night – and does both brilliantly. I loved being served a pint of IPA by a teenage Sisters of Mercy fan with an amazing knowledge of the beers he is pouring.

And I should also mention two breweries that I had never heard of before: Fyne Ales from Cairndow in Scotland and Northumberland’s High House Farm Brewery. Fyne’s Avalanche is as good a golden ale as I can remember drinking with a zesty, grapefruit like note being punched out the way by a gorgeous hoppy finish. I love light, gently fruity, hoppy ales like this, even though I suspect that makes me a bit of a big girl’s blouse in the eyes of the pros.

Maybe mentioning High House Farm’s Ferocious Fred will redeem my reputation. Dark, sweet, malty and wintery – their website calls it an almost black ‘extra’ porter – Fred sticks to your ribs and warms you up from the inside. Just the job for a sub zero New Year’s Day afternoon.

Beer

Real ale has held up much better than most beer categories during the credit crunch. Perhaps this is because it tastes much better from cask than it does at home from a bottle; a fact that distinguishes it from lager, wine and spirits. But even so, good breweries and pubs need our support more than ever at the moment. The British Beer & Pub Association estimated that by mid-2009 some 52 pubs were shutting up shop every week and just this week a tiny brewery near where I grew up in Worcestershire went to the wall.

It’s a real shame. Pubs have been the cornerstones of so many British communities for so long. It was in a pub in 1483 that Richard III signed the death warrant of the Duke of Buckingham and in 1953 Crick and Watson first publicly announced their discovery of the structure of DNA over a pint and some pork scratchings in the Eagle and Child in Oxford. More recently, and just as importantly, I met my future wife when she was working behind a bar. So get out there and have a pint of something different and support your local. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Oh, and mine’s a pint of Ferocious Fred.

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See you in 2010
December 24th, 2009

This is the 117th and last Random Bottlings post of 2009. I’m off to Scotland and Northumbria until the New Year armed with a corkscrew and a bag packed with great wine. Who needs clothes when you can fit in another bottle of decent Burgundy or some aged Tawny Port?

It’s been quite a year and it’s hard to think back over 2009 without thinking of the economy. Over at Bibendum Times, there have been two great articles about the impact of the credit crunch on a small, up and coming wine region, Central Otago in New Zealand. Matt Douglas of Hawksburn Terrace has written a brilliant piece from an insider’s point of view – check it out.

In other news, 2009 was the year the sun returned to France. It looks like it has been a fantastic vintage in Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhone. We are already signing up producers for our Bordeaux Tasting in April and I can’t wait to get stuck into the wines come the spring.

Food-wise it has been a good year with personal highlights including a blow out pre-wedding celebration with friends at St John (rhubarb pavlova is a fantastic idea), the ubiquitous Koffmann trotter at Selfridges (though the scallops and squid ink dish was the real star), a bowl of spaghetti with lemon, raw anchovies and bottarga in Sicily and a homecooked venison steak and kidney pie (made with some seriously good venison) as part of a Bye Bye Blighty meal for emigrating mates. Happy times.

Looking ahead to 2010, the year kicks off early with our Burgundy Tasting on January 12th and we follow that up with the Bibendum Times Annual Tasting on the 20th. It’s going to be a crazy start to the Tweenies or whatever the next decade is going to be called.

On the eating front, I’m looking forward to some serious pigging out starting with Blokes Eat Beef at Goodman and the wish list of restaurants to visit has already been drawn up. Number one is The Walnut Tree. I missed Shaun Hill at The Merchant House in Ludlow and I’m determined not to miss him again.

All of which just serves reminds me that I really have to get back to the gym soon. I’ll do it in January, I promise.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

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