Champagne with the Freemasons
Jul. 21st, 2025 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn Wednesday we went to what the Wine Society calls a 'walkaround' tasting. We don't often do this: the format offers the chance to taste wines from the Society's current list in an informal way, but it's quite an expensive way to sample wines which don't greatly excite us. Not necessarily bad value, but not good value for us. We look out for tastings which play to our interests (the most recent of these was the Languedoc Roussillon tasting eighteen months ago). Wednesday's tasting was in Durham, though, which should be encouraged; and it had a theme of sorts, "Wine Champions", wines which have scored highly in the Society's internal tastings. I was unconvinced, especially because it was on a Wednesday (quiz night), so the logistics were complicated, but durham_rambler was keen, and hope triumphed over experience.
Bearing those caveats in mind, it was a fun evening. It helped that the venue was the Masonic Hall, a building which I have passed many times but never entered. We walked there, retracing to a large extent the route we had taken home from the Gala, pausing halfway to sit on a bench in the Riverwalk to eat our sandwiches and enjoy the view of the Castle and Cathedral, and arrived just after the start time, without getting too hot and sticky doing so. We were shown into the downstairs hall, a large light room with decorative modern stained glass windows, and a door at the far end opening onto the garden. We headed for the table to the left of that door, where our wine - we started with the champagne, it seemed only polite - was poured for us by The Other Quizmaster (Retired), this, it turns out, being his day job. We took our glasses out onto the patio, and enjoyed the view of the racecourse (and eavesdropping on other participants, who can't have been all that local, because they all seemed to be discussing whether that could possibly be a race course; we didn't tell them what had been going on there last Saturday). This was a pleasant way to spend an evening; the wines were almost irrelevant.
I liked Scassabarile Marsigliana Nera Rosato, Santa Venere, a surprisingly rich Italian rosé. Would pay £15.50 a bottle for it? There'd have to be a reason why I wanted that particular wine, but it's not impossible.
I wouldn't have identified the Curator white as South African chenin blanc: it had an almost bitter-almond edge (is this what the description means by 'stone fruit'? who knows?). At under a tenner a bottle I might actually buy this.
There was a Blind Tasting Challenge, less of a challenge (and I won't say whether this is a good thing or a bad one) since we were warned in advance that all three wines were cabernet sauvigon, of different ages, and we were asked simply to say which we preferred. The three wines were recealed as The Society's Exhibition Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2022; Delheim Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg-Stellenbosch 2021; and Weinert Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 (from Argentina). I - and a majority of the other tasters, not includingdurham_rambler - preferred the last and oldest of these. No surprise there.
The highlight of my evening was the Madeira a ten-year old Henriques and Henriques Sercial: I could easily develop a taste for this.
We had booked a taxi to take us from the tasting to the Elm Tree, which worked smoothly for us,though the taxi firm may have been confused. We arrived at the pub to discover that since we had not been there early to snaffle a table, we were reduced to squeezing onto the end of one occupied by our friends and rivals from the Physics department. Since neither team was at full strength, this wasn't really a problem. We did not do well in the quiz, but I don't think our performance was impaired by wine: there were just too many questions about things we didn't know (sport, mostly).
durham_rambler was keen, and hope triumphed over experience.Bearing those caveats in mind, it was a fun evening. It helped that the venue was the Masonic Hall, a building which I have passed many times but never entered. We walked there, retracing to a large extent the route we had taken home from the Gala, pausing halfway to sit on a bench in the Riverwalk to eat our sandwiches and enjoy the view of the Castle and Cathedral, and arrived just after the start time, without getting too hot and sticky doing so. We were shown into the downstairs hall, a large light room with decorative modern stained glass windows, and a door at the far end opening onto the garden. We headed for the table to the left of that door, where our wine - we started with the champagne, it seemed only polite - was poured for us by The Other Quizmaster (Retired), this, it turns out, being his day job. We took our glasses out onto the patio, and enjoyed the view of the racecourse (and eavesdropping on other participants, who can't have been all that local, because they all seemed to be discussing whether that could possibly be a race course; we didn't tell them what had been going on there last Saturday). This was a pleasant way to spend an evening; the wines were almost irrelevant.
I liked Scassabarile Marsigliana Nera Rosato, Santa Venere, a surprisingly rich Italian rosé. Would pay £15.50 a bottle for it? There'd have to be a reason why I wanted that particular wine, but it's not impossible.
I wouldn't have identified the Curator white as South African chenin blanc: it had an almost bitter-almond edge (is this what the description means by 'stone fruit'? who knows?). At under a tenner a bottle I might actually buy this.
There was a Blind Tasting Challenge, less of a challenge (and I won't say whether this is a good thing or a bad one) since we were warned in advance that all three wines were cabernet sauvigon, of different ages, and we were asked simply to say which we preferred. The three wines were recealed as The Society's Exhibition Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2022; Delheim Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg-Stellenbosch 2021; and Weinert Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 (from Argentina). I - and a majority of the other tasters, not including
durham_rambler - preferred the last and oldest of these. No surprise there.The highlight of my evening was the Madeira a ten-year old Henriques and Henriques Sercial: I could easily develop a taste for this.
We had booked a taxi to take us from the tasting to the Elm Tree, which worked smoothly for us,though the taxi firm may have been confused. We arrived at the pub to discover that since we had not been there early to snaffle a table, we were reduced to squeezing onto the end of one occupied by our friends and rivals from the Physics department. Since neither team was at full strength, this wasn't really a problem. We did not do well in the quiz, but I don't think our performance was impaired by wine: there were just too many questions about things we didn't know (sport, mostly).
