Drinking in the afternoon
Aug. 11th, 2012 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe spent much of yesterday at the Northumbria Food & Wine Festival; a mailing from Hexham Book Festival promised that they would receive a small percentage on our tickets, we saw that our friend Helen Savage would be there, the entrance fee of £20 gave you tokens for samples, and it looked like a fun excursion. We even persuaded S. to join us (she didn't take much persuading).
We had a great time, and a lot of the credit goes to the talks programme. Without that, there were maybe a dozen wine merchants arranged around a big horseshoe shaped marquee, three kitchens where you could buy light meals, and tables to sit and enjoy the food and wine. The tokens didn't go as far as I'd anticipated, as many wines were priced at two or more token for a sample glass; I'd assumed that there would be food merchants as well as wine merchants, but with the exception of a lone chocolatier, no, and for most of the afternoon no coffee either (the coffee stall turned up having done its regular day's stint somewhere else; this can't have been unexpected, but no-one to whom we moaned about the lack of coffee was able to tell us they'd be along later). The talks kept us entertained and for the most part kept our glasses filled, too - unexpectedly, and we arrived for the first talk having provided ourselves with refreshment, to be told, 'drink that, and now drink this! and this...' Which was fun, and kept us so busy that we didn't even have time to visit all the stalls.
I was glad, too, that we visited the festival on the Friday afternoon when it was comparatively quiet, and exhibitors had time to chat. I particularly enjoyed talking to Pacta Connect, who were presenting wines - and olive oil, and elderberry vinegar - from Croatia. The wines - a malvasia with the honey tang of mead, a teran which was a pleasant accompaniment to my hummus and lamb flatbread picnic - were interesting, but the country sounded wonderful. the hop, the vine were friendly and helpful, with an eclectic mix of wines from around the world and beers from just along the Tyne at Wylam - I tasted a very rnjoyable viognier. I'd have liked to get back to Carruthers & Kent: I think I could have squandered all my tokens there very easily, but as it was had no more than a sip of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler's Château Ka Source Blache (pale, clean and creamy, very elegant) and S.'s Aglianico dewl Vulture - that's a DOC, apparently, not a producer - which was soft and cherry ripe. Elsewhere I enjoyed a South African grenache rosé with a Percheron on the label (the sort of pale dry rosé that has become so hard to find): the Wine Society stocks the same producer's reds, and from Jancis Robinson says, they'd be worth trying.
The talks, though, managed to include the wines I enjoyed most, and least, of the afternoon. Helen gave us a whirlwind tour of common wine faults, and what to do if you meet them: what happens if a wine is exposed too much to the air, or too little, why brettanomyces is not the end of the world, and why something that's a fault in most wine is what makes a really good sherry (with a sample that proves what I have long suspected, that I do not like really good sherry). Her colleague Sarah Abbott talked about 'what we'll be drinking next year... possibly': I won't be drinking top-flight Tasmanian bubbly, even if she manages to persuade the producer to sell it in the UK: it was a delight to try, but I can't take fizzy wines seriously enough to pay the price. But I'd gladly buy the three wines from Arcadia Vineyards: a blend of sauvignon blanc and local grape narince, as pale and clean as that sherry and much nicer tasting, a sauvignon gris vinified white, light and refreshing, and a rosé msde from csbernet franc and merlot but very pale, barely even blushing, and almost white wine on the palate, but with a final tannic grip - Sarah felt that this was a fault, a work in progress, but I liked it very much, and would have been glad of a bottle this evening to accompany our salade niçoise. That's Arcadia Vineyards in Turkey - these are Thracian wines.
And home by train, enjoying the ride where the track runs along right beside the Tyne.
ETA: Helen Savage's tasting notes in the Journal.
We had a great time, and a lot of the credit goes to the talks programme. Without that, there were maybe a dozen wine merchants arranged around a big horseshoe shaped marquee, three kitchens where you could buy light meals, and tables to sit and enjoy the food and wine. The tokens didn't go as far as I'd anticipated, as many wines were priced at two or more token for a sample glass; I'd assumed that there would be food merchants as well as wine merchants, but with the exception of a lone chocolatier, no, and for most of the afternoon no coffee either (the coffee stall turned up having done its regular day's stint somewhere else; this can't have been unexpected, but no-one to whom we moaned about the lack of coffee was able to tell us they'd be along later). The talks kept us entertained and for the most part kept our glasses filled, too - unexpectedly, and we arrived for the first talk having provided ourselves with refreshment, to be told, 'drink that, and now drink this! and this...' Which was fun, and kept us so busy that we didn't even have time to visit all the stalls.
I was glad, too, that we visited the festival on the Friday afternoon when it was comparatively quiet, and exhibitors had time to chat. I particularly enjoyed talking to Pacta Connect, who were presenting wines - and olive oil, and elderberry vinegar - from Croatia. The wines - a malvasia with the honey tang of mead, a teran which was a pleasant accompaniment to my hummus and lamb flatbread picnic - were interesting, but the country sounded wonderful. the hop, the vine were friendly and helpful, with an eclectic mix of wines from around the world and beers from just along the Tyne at Wylam - I tasted a very rnjoyable viognier. I'd have liked to get back to Carruthers & Kent: I think I could have squandered all my tokens there very easily, but as it was had no more than a sip of
durham_rambler's Château Ka Source Blache (pale, clean and creamy, very elegant) and S.'s Aglianico dewl Vulture - that's a DOC, apparently, not a producer - which was soft and cherry ripe. Elsewhere I enjoyed a South African grenache rosé with a Percheron on the label (the sort of pale dry rosé that has become so hard to find): the Wine Society stocks the same producer's reds, and from Jancis Robinson says, they'd be worth trying.The talks, though, managed to include the wines I enjoyed most, and least, of the afternoon. Helen gave us a whirlwind tour of common wine faults, and what to do if you meet them: what happens if a wine is exposed too much to the air, or too little, why brettanomyces is not the end of the world, and why something that's a fault in most wine is what makes a really good sherry (with a sample that proves what I have long suspected, that I do not like really good sherry). Her colleague Sarah Abbott talked about 'what we'll be drinking next year... possibly': I won't be drinking top-flight Tasmanian bubbly, even if she manages to persuade the producer to sell it in the UK: it was a delight to try, but I can't take fizzy wines seriously enough to pay the price. But I'd gladly buy the three wines from Arcadia Vineyards: a blend of sauvignon blanc and local grape narince, as pale and clean as that sherry and much nicer tasting, a sauvignon gris vinified white, light and refreshing, and a rosé msde from csbernet franc and merlot but very pale, barely even blushing, and almost white wine on the palate, but with a final tannic grip - Sarah felt that this was a fault, a work in progress, but I liked it very much, and would have been glad of a bottle this evening to accompany our salade niçoise. That's Arcadia Vineyards in Turkey - these are Thracian wines.
And home by train, enjoying the ride where the track runs along right beside the Tyne.
ETA: Helen Savage's tasting notes in the Journal.
