Tempranillo Day – Celebrating the Tempting Tempranillo

Tempranillo & Mazuelo vines at Contino in Rioja Alavesa

I cannot claim to have a favourite grape, let alone one that I drink to the exclusion of all others. I find the less trodden wine paths to be so fascinating that I simply cannot resist lesser known grapes – Carmenère, Zweigelt, St Laurent, Grenache Gris, Nascetta, Romorantin and the like all speak to me and demand their attention. I am never professionally happier or more excited than when experiencing a new grape variety for the first time.

A fine Riesling would probably be my desert island wine of choice as I never seem to tire of that beguiling grape, but for the rest I enjoy a wide spectrum of grapes with very different characters. Regular readers will know though that my passion for all things Spanish often breaks through and trumps my affection for wines from other places, so I think that if push comes to shove Tempranillo might well be my favoured red wine grape – unless I happen to be in a particular Cabernet, Pinot or Syrah sort of mood.

Very different conditions for old vine Tempranillo / Tinto del País in Castilla y León

And why am I so fond of Tempranillo? Well I cannot give you a neat answer to that really, but it speaks to me. Unlike the classic French grapes, which are only grown in specific areas of the country, Tempranillo is used all over Spain and so produces a wide range of wine styles and yet they often seem to be attractive wines to me – the well made examples anyway. Even at quite low price points Tempranillo can be enjoyable to drink.

Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero

As someone who celebrates diversity in wine it pains me that the differences are being ironed out. Many marketeers seem to believe that wine should be simplified for the UK consumer, even if they have to stretch the truth to do so. Nowadays you are more likely to find Tempranillo on a Spanish wine label from whatever region it hails when to my mind they should have used the old local name: Cencibel in Valdepeñas, Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero, Tinto del País in Cigales, Tinta de Toro in Toro and the poetic Ull De Llebre in Cataluña. What’s more many people believe these grapes have evolved apart and so are now only very closely related rather than being absolutely identical to Tempranillo – not least the great Carlos Falco, Marqués de Griñon.

Tempranillo and olives in Utiel-Requña

It is Tempranillo’s fame as the main grape of Rioja that brings it to most people’s attention, but given Rioja’s popularity it always amazes me how few people grow Tempranillo outside Spain. It has become a dominant grape in Portugal – where it is called Tinto Roriz and Aragonez depending on where you are. There is even some grown in the south of France and I have tasted some from Virginia and Texas and even had one from Peru the other day, but Tempranillo has not yet become a true international grape. The plantings outside Europe remain small and relatively inconsequential, except in Argentina, but even there it is treated as an everyday grape rather than being given the star treatment it deserves. Surely Tempranillo is capable of challenging for Malbec‘s Argentinean throne?

Tempranillo in the softer Tuscan landscape

Perhaps it is this very diversity that I like about Tempranillo? That sense of never knowing quite what you are going to get. As with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans there is no one flavour to Tempranillo. Some people taste black fruit and some red, some regions produce dry savoury wines from it while other areas make richly fruity examples. Some wine makers craft bright, modern Tempranillos that celebrate fruit and liveliness, while many winemakers stick to the traditional silky, oaky style that made the grape famous in the first place.

Although most famous as the principal grape of red Rioja, Tempranillo – and its near relatives – is also responsible for an array of lovely wines from across Spain and in my opinion it deserves to be as celebrated as much more famous and widely used grape varieties. Which is why I made sure that I tasted some on 8th November which just happened to be International Tempranillo Day:

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

2011 Beronia Tempranillo Rosado
Bodegas Beronia, Ollauri, Rioja Alta, D.O.Ca Rioja
100% Tempranillo 
The colour is a vivid strawberry juice hue, but it looks like real fruit rather than a confection. The nose is fresh, floral and gently fruity while the palate is dry, rich-ish, crisp-ish, nicely balanced  and very nice to drink with almost anything. It won’t win any prizes for complexity, but will make lots of people happy. Spain makes very good rosé, but why isn’t Tempranillo used for more of them? Personally I think it is much more suitable than the more normal Garnacha – 86/100 points

Around £9.00 a bottle in the UK from Ocado.

2010 Beronia Tempranillo Elaboración Especial
Bodegas Beronia, Ollauri, Rioja Alta, D.O.Ca Rioja
100% Tempranillo (in Rioja it is traditionally blended with Garnacha and others to make the wines fruitier) aged 8 months in new American Oak barrels.
Deep opaque plummy-black colour.
The nose is fragrant and enticing with spice, vanilla and a touch of mocha.
Pretty full-bodied for Rioja (which despite its reputation is rarely more than medium-bodied) with rich sweet black plummy fruit, fragrant vanilla and dried fruit notes too. The palate is round, rich and succulent with rich cherry on the the end of the mid palate together with a touch of fruit cake and a light dusting of cocoa and coffee and a lovely sinewy texture of gentle tannins and oak. This is a terrific wine to drink and enjoy without thinking about too much. The soft, fruity and modern side of Tempranillo and Rioja it scores high for pleasure and sheer drinkability – 88/100 points

Around £12.00 a bottle in the UK from Ocado.

2008 Matarromera Crianza
Bodega Matarromera, Valbuena de Duero, D.O. Ribera del Duero
100% Tinto Fino / Tempranillo aged 12 months in mixture of French &  American Oak barrels.
Matarromera were only founded in 1988, but they are in the heartland of Ribera del Duero and are right up there in quality with some of the much more famous producers of this great wine region which needs to be better known in the UK.
Intense aromas of plum, cocoa together with smoky, cedary spices.
The palate was sumptuous, soft and succulent at first with rich plum fruit and other mixed dark fresh and stewed fruit with fig and black cherry. The oak is very tasty indeed, coconut, vanilla, cocoa and coffee with some spice too. the tannins give a lovely fine grain texture which is so wrapped up in ripe fruit that’s there is no astringency. This is a big, but still medium bodied and dry wine and although the fruit is ripe it is not sweet at all. A beautifully balanced and concentrated wine that is hugely enjoyable and quite delicious. Not yet as complex as it will become – it needs time to develop, but it is really delicious and extremely pleasurable already and has much to offer for a long time to come – 91/100 points

Around £25.00 a bottle in the UK from Harvey Nichols.

2010 Finca Constancia Tempranillo Parcela 23
Bodegas Gonzalez Byass, Otero, Toledo, Vino de la Tierra de Castilla
Special single parcel bottling of 100% Tempranillo aged 6 months in mixture of new French &  American Oak barrels.
Better known for Sherry, in 2006 Gonzalez Byass created this stunning modern estate in a part of Spain that seems at first glance to be a backwater for wine. However it is in the Sierra de Gredos, renowned for old vine Garnacha and the area is also home to Carlos Falco’s great Dominio de Valdepusa which produces some of Spain’s greatest wines in this seemingly unlikely place.
This will also make many friends as it is a very user friendly, winter warmer kind of wine. The nose really shows that new oak, smoky, toasty and very vanilla and coconut like those marshmallow sweets rolled in coconut! There was rich, stewed blackberry and plum fruit too as well as a dash of spice. The palate was at the top end of medium bodied with ripe plums, sweeter strawberry fruit, rich cherry and a touch herbs as you get in Chianti and all along this sweet vanilla, smooth, leathery oak giving a touch of toffee too. This is one to drink relatively soon and it is a bargain, so gets high marks from me for value – 88/100 points

Around £10.99 a bottle in the UK from the Oxford Wine Company.

There is no doubt that the Ribera del Duero was the finest of these, so do try it if you can, but all the wines showed well and reminded me how fond I am of wines made from Tempranillo and its relatives and the good news is we can drink them whenever we like, not just on International Tempranillo Day.

For the Love of Cheeses – a lovely guide to buying Cheese & Wine in London

Doctor Samuel Johnson famously said; ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.’

As a Londoner I think he got it spot on, it is a great city, vibrant colourful and teeming with life and it has got better and better over the forty odd years that I have known it. The things to see and do have improved, as have the shops and especially the food. There are restaurants the equal of anywhere, casual cafés that remain little local secrets and gastro-temples with world-wide reputations. There are wine shops, food shops and delicatessens that keep Londoners supplied with good things to eat and drink. Some of them are famous to all of us, while others remain known only to the people who live in the part of London that it serves. That is the thing about London you see, it doesn’t really have just one centre, but is in reality a group of villages joined together and lots of enjoyment can be had exploring these mislaid corners of the UK’s capital.

So, if you are a foodie, how on earth do you keep track of all the best places in London to buy your wine and cheese? Other than heading off to the well known Harrods Food Hall, John Lewis’s Food Hall, Borough Market or Whole Food Market in South Kensington it isn’t always easy.

Well, now you can relax as help has arrived. Recently I have been telling you about some rather lovely books about wine and food that I think will make great presents for Christmas and here is another:

The London Cheese and Wine Guide
Published by Allegra at £11.95
Also available from Amazon.co.uk and Waterstones in the UK at between £9.10 and £11.95.

Even if you don’t want to buy any of the things they mention this is a beautiful little book whose contents cannot help but make your mouth water. The publishers claim that it is the ‘definitive guide to the best places for cheese and wine in London‘ and to me that is a very exciting prospect indeed. I love wine shops, book shops, food shops and cheese shops. Time spent rooting around in any of those is never time wasted and I have certainly become aware that London is home to more and more cheese merchants of late, I have just not known where many of them were. Now I can just flick through this guide, drool over the photographs and head off to wherever they recommended.

Even if you never use it to buy anything it is a lovely book to own, if you like cheese and wine that is. It is beautifully designed and feels strangely tactile and satisfying to hold while the photographs get me salivating every time I dip in.

The book is more of a guide for reference than one to read, although I have whiled away a few happy hours with it, and it is well laid out and easy to navigate your way around.

The first section deals with cheese, including how artisan cheese is made, followed by a chapter listing London’s best specialist cheese shops. They are each given a page with opening hours and contact details together with the owner’s name, an idea of how many cheeses they stock. There is a pricing index too as for each shop we are given an idea of the price they charge for Brie de Meaux, Mature Cheddar, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Stilton.

It isn’t only cheese that goes with wine though, so the next chapter covers London’s best delicatessens in exactly the same way. Then just when you think the possibilities for buying artisan cheese must surely be exhausted you reach a section on London’s food markets. This brief chapter outlines the cheese specialists at Borough Market while a market directory and cheese trader grid tell you who sells good cheese in every London market.

We have now arrived at the mid-point of the book and it moves on to wine. An excellent chapter gives specialist wine merchants similar treatment to the cheese shops, some of them are pretty well known, but many are tucked away and might not have sprung to mind before. Then just to give even more food for thought, this is followed by a really exciting chapter on London wine bars and one on restaurants who offer a particularly good selection of cheese and wine.

Then just when you are feeling utterly stuffed they provide a section on the correct way to taste cheese and how to pair cheese with wine – which is a lot more difficult than most people imagine.

Any Londoner, or visitor armed with this book, will now be able to track down all these wonderful, but tucked away, little cheese and wine shops as well as the perfect places to enjoy cheese and wine together.

It’s not a big book, but it is bursting with  lovely things and will give you, or the person you give it to, a great deal of pleasure.

Photographs by kind permission of Allegra.

Greece – Part 2: A Taste of Monastic Life

The delightful sights of the coast of Mount Athos

Earlier in the year I had a wonderful tour around the vineyards of Northern Greece. Initially our little party were guests of Tsantalis (pronounced Santar-lee), who make some really good wines that are widely available.

The first part of the trip was a couple of days at their headquarters and main winery near Thessaloniki together with a visit to the wilds of Rapsani near Mount Olympus. The scenery was beautiful, the people welcoming, the food stunning and the wines – even for a longtime fan of Greek wine like me – were a revelation.

If the delights of Greek wine have passed you by, Tsantali produce two wines that are amongst my favourite for great value right now: Tsantali Rapsani and Tsantali Organic Cabernet – they really do take a lot of beating for price and quality.

With the nights closing in and the onset of Winter I find myself reliving the heat, clear blue skies and fierce sun of the Eastern Mediterranean and thought that I would share more of the experiences with you.

Mount Athos taken from near Lerissos

Some of you may remember from reading part 1 that we were a small all male group because the centrepiece of the trip was a visit to Mount Athos, where women are not allowed – hell even female animals are forbidden! This area takes its name from The Holy Mountain of Mount Athos and is actually a peninsula which forms a closed community made up of some 20 Monasteries. 17 of these are Greek Orthodox with the others being Serbian, Bulgarian and Russian and we were to be guests of the Agiou Panteleimonos, or St. Panteleimon, Russian Monastery.

Mount Athos is a part of Greece, but is basically self-governing and enjoys ‘special status’ within the Greek State and the E.U., so a permit – essentially a visa – is needed to get there, but the centuries old ban on women is still in force. Frankly I don’t suppose I would have ever have got to visit if I had not been the guest of Tsantali, but more of them later.

Our journey to The Holy Mountain started early – there’s nothing like a little suffering to make you feel like a pilgrim. We were breakfasted and packed by 7 a.m. and waiting in the cool morning air for the straggler to materialise so that we could finally set off. There was a sort of reality show sense of jeopardy about all this as time was finite – we had a ferry to catch. There is only one ferry a day and the implication was that all our plans would come to nothing if we didn’t get there on time.

It was a long drive East from Thessaloniki to our destination, the distance is only about 150 kilometres, but we were on small roads in a heavily laden van and all the while we were in a race against the clock and frankly it looked as though we were going to loose.

Map of Greece & Mount Athos – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

Mount Athos forms the lower two thirds of the Easternmost prong sticking down from the Halkidiki Peninsula and although there is a road of sorts it seems that the only way to visit the Monasteries on the Western shore of the peninsula is to catch a ferry from Ouranoupoli, the last town on the Greek side of the border. A similar service operates from Lerissos on the East coast which we passed through and both these ports seemed very attractive towns –  information that I filed away for another day.

Possibly my favourite shop sign in the world!

My permit to enter The Holy Mountain

All the excitement ended in a bit of an anticlimax really. We were definitely late, but the ferry was still there and even though our hosts had to spend ages in the Pilgrims’ Bureau getting our permissions in order we made the ship easily. For the first time in my life I was officially a Pilgrim and on my way to Mount Athos!

The voyage was delightfully relaxing and the views of Mount Athos were stunning, so I thought I would just show you my photographs and comment where appropriate…please click the photographs for a larger view.

Leaving Ouranoupoli behind.

Left: Last glimpse of Ouranoupoli. Right: A skete.

Views from the ferry – olives by the shore & a monastic settlement or skete.

The shoreline of the Mount Athos peninsula was dotted with little settlements and often the ferry would pull up by their jetty and waiting groups of monks would board – we were forbidden to photograph the monks I am afraid.

Our happy band of Pilgrims arrives at Agiou Panteleimonos. At times I was put in mind of Lhasa by the monastery buildings we saw.

The ferry & our speedboat to the vineyards…

After touring the monastery for a while – which we were not allowed to photograph, but whose gift shop sold blessings as well as icons of Tsar Nicholas 11 and President Putin – we were taken by speedboat to the Tsantali managed vineyards of Metoxi Chromitsa whose winery is housed in a cloister settlement belonging to the Agiou Panteleimonos Monastery.

Tsantali vineyards – Metoxi Chromitsa with Ouranoupoli in the distance.

My first experience of the landscape amazed me. There was such tranquility and beauty, the vistas magnificent and the weather was perfection, I am not sure I have ever seen such beautiful vineyards and the feeling of peace was quite overwhelming.

Metoxi Chromitsa – vineyards around the cloisters of St. Panteleimon / Agiou Panteleimonos.

Nothing had prepared me for the grandeur of arriving at the Cloister, we were on dirt tracks rather than roads, so it was the closest I will ever get to the feeling that a mediaeval person would have had when arriving at a castle or monastery. The building dominated the landscape and reassured by its very presence and I felt quite detached from the modern world.

Our Pilgrim band arriving at the winery in the cloisters. The right hand photo is taken from the balcony you can see in the left hand one at top right.

The winery, and our little group, were housed in a part of the Cloister that appeared quite tumbledown, but the important bits had been done up and our quarters were perfectly comfortable, while the views from the balcony were stunning.

Left: The Cloister’s garden and vineyards. Right: Pilgrims going about their devotions in the room that backs onto the balcony in photo above.

The meals we were served were superb and consisted of many dishes like rather grand mezes. In the main the monks and any visitors are vegetarian, but there is some leeway to allow them to eat fish. All the vegetable were locally grown, the honey was made by the monks and their bees and all seemed right with the world.

Around the cloisters.

All over Europe monasteries had been the keepers of knowledge for centuries, and that included knowing how to grow grapes and make wine, but it seems the twentieth century saw a marked decline in winemaking on Mount Athos.  The Tsantali company have been producing wine and spirits since long before this region was part of Greece, Ottoman rule finally ended here in 1913. Evangelos Tsantalis came to Metoxi Chromitsa in 1971 and noticing that the vineyards were no longer tended he offered his family’s expertise to bring them back to life – as long as he could also make some commercial wine. The deal was done and soon wines from Mount Athos were commercially available for the first time.

Evangelos knew a good thing when he saw one. The place has a classic Mediterranean climate, the winters relatively mild and dry, with just enough rain and snow melt water off Mount Athos and sea breezes that temper the dry heat of summer. I suspect these conditions that suit grapes so well also made it a perfect place for the monks to settle too.

These growing conditions allow Tsantalis to farm organically which helps with the biodiversity of this beautiful place. Also the deep sandy-clay soils are pretty thin with have very little organic matter which forces the vine to put down deep roots seeking out nutrients, which can help to keep yields down and to increase complexity in a finished wine.

In order to experience the wines from this amazing place we headed off down the slopes towards the sea and sat on the terrace of a beautiful tasting room that overlooks the vineyards and the sparkling waters of the Singitic Gulf or Gulf of Agion Oros / Holy Mountain with the Sithonia Peninsula shimmering in the distance.

Probably the best view I have ever seen from a tasting…

The Wines

2011 Agioritikos white
PGI (Vin de Pays) Mount Athos
A dry white wine blend of Assyrtiko, Athiri & Roditis grapes
The colour is very pale straw with a little lemon citrine brightness.
The nose is very fresh and clean with lively with citrus and  some herbal components too.
The palate is surprisingly soft rather than crisp, fresh though with enough acidity to keep it zesty, some weight makes it feel quite like a fat, floral and rich Vinho Verde. The zing is rich like lemon peel rather than light lemon juice. This is not a wine to particularly think about, but it is very good with Greek cuisine and I found myself returning to it again and again with lunch – 86/100 points.

Widely available in Greece, it really is good with the food, it is stocked in the UK by Wine Rack at £8.99.

2011 Metoxi Chromitsa X white
PGI (Vin de Pays) Mount Athos
This blend of 40% Assyrtico, 40% Sauvignon Blanc & 20% Athiri is one of the top white wines they produce here and the quality shows in the concentration and complexity.

The nose is wonderfully aromatic, but not in a sweet perfumed way, but more akin to a herb garden; broom, thyme and fennel herb notes dominate and are kept fresh by some underlying lemon and lime.
The mouthfeel is fatter and richer than crisp, textured even, even the high acidity has a richness rather than crisp or tart quality. There is a stony flinty mineral character too as well as a fresh citric tang giving a long citric finish. This is a pretty good wine and goes superbly with classic Greek food – 88/100 points.

2007 Metoxi Chromitsa X red
PGI (Vin de Pays) Mount Athos
This limited release wine is a blend of some of the best parcels of grapes grown on the estate; 20% Xinomavro (pronounced Kersi-naw-mav-ro), 30% Limnio and 50% Cabernet Sauvignon and aged for 12 months in heavy toast French oak barrels.
The colour is a bright, just opaque plum with some garnet showing. The nose is warm, soft and deep with rich plum and cherry fruit and some crunchy raspberry fruit adding a fresh acidic note as well as a touch of vanilla, like cream soda, some spice and pepper. A little twist of dried cranberry is there too, showing that the wine has a little age.
The palate offers rich black cherry mingling with a little brighter more acidic red cherry too. The texture is quite chewy with dry tannins, quite high acid and tangy raspberry characters all the way through. This medium bodied wine is surprisingly fresh and elegant – 89/100 points.

2007 Agioritiko Abaton
PGI (Vin de Pays) Mount Athos
This 80% Cabernet Sauvignon & 20% Limnio blend is almost the top tier of production and represents a rigorous selection of fruit, fermented in open topped wooden vats with the finished wine being aged 12 months in new French oak. Abaton by the way means ‘untrodden’ and refers to the cut off and monastic nature of Mount Athos.
Deep red with very little black, but more garnet. The nose gives cedar and developed leather notes, a touch of prune and even some leather. It smells mature with bitter cherry, chocolate and cassis.
The palate is very soft  and pretty juicy with ripe black cherry verging on over ripe. There is prune, toffee, coffee and earth making it quite complex and nice with a smoky mocha quality. This wine feels very traditional, even attractively rustic and it cries out for all the meat dishes we could not eat on Mount Athos – 89/100 points

2001 Metoxi Chromitsa red
PGI (Vin de Pays) Mount Athos
This mature example predated the production of the higher rated Metoxi Chromitsa X wines, but gave us a good idea as to what these wines do with some age. It is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon & Limnio fermented in old open wooden vats and then aged in new French oak barrels for 8 months.
The colour showed much more brown and had a brambly hue too.
The nose was a little meaty and singed and had some earthiness, dried fruit, coffee and smoke.
The palate was lovely, supple and concentrated with smoky dried leather and fruit, cedar, spice, mocha and caramel. There was a little acidity and supple tannins giving a nice texture – 90/100 points.

The 1999 Metoxi Chromitsa red was equally good if a little more fragile with orange peel and cranberry characters.

As the Monastery is Russian their top wine, Kormilitsa Gold – which we didn’t taste – is frequently served at the Kremlin.

Left: sunset from the vineyards. Right: the border.

I’m not sure that I would want to spend my whole life here – the cells were very hot at night – but visiting Mount Athos, seeing some of the Monasteries and the stunning landscape was a great experience that I will cherish. As was getting a taste of what the monks eat and trying these fascinating wines in the place where they are made.

Can I thank the Agiou Panteleimonos Monastery and the Tsantali company for their wonderful hospitality and the great Ted Lelekas (his blog is here, in Greek) for doing all the hard work and making it happen. Thank you all, the visit was a superb experience.

Please, the next time you visit Greece take a little care over the wines you have and I think you will be astonished by how good they can be. By the same token, the next time you want to drink something different at home – give Greek wines a go. You will not be disappointed and if you drink it while looking at my photographs here, then you won’t really need to go abroad –  will you?

A Feast of a Book

With Christmas coming I am telling you about some wonderful books that would make superb gifts for others or even a sneaky treat for yourself.

Recently I wrote about an excellent guide to the wines of Bordeaux and now I would like to recommend something altogether more sumptuous.

I am especially fond of Asian food, to my mind the cuisines of the Far East are some of the most exciting and mouthwatering of all. I find it almost impossible to resist the vibrant colours, fragrant aromas and exotic tastes of Asian food whether from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka or the Indian sub-continent. And yet as a wine lover I often find it very hard to find a wine that goes with such food. It is so very easy to limit myself to a narrow range of wines and styles that I know work with Asian food, that I could well miss many more exciting combinations and experiences.

Well, help is at hand. Two friends of mine, Patricia Guy and Edwin Soon have got together and created a beautiful book that deals with this very subject:

Patricia Guy & Edwin Soon researching their book

Wine With Asian Food: New Frontiers in Taste
By Patricia Guy and Edwin Soon
Published by Tide-Mark at $24.95
Also available from Amazon.com as well as Amazon.co.uk and Waterstones in the UK at around £20.99

Partnering Asian food with wine can be tricky and this book starts with an excellent analysis of why. In Europe we often drink wines from a country with food in the style of that country – drinking local with local often works well, Red Burgundy with Boeuf Bourguignon, Sancerre with goat’s cheese or Chianti with a rich pasta ragu. Expanding on the problem Patricia and Edwin tell us that with most Asian meals ‘several dishes are served at the same time and are shared by everyone present‘. This of course is different from the European tradition where there is one dominant dish and means that ‘the wine chosen for such a meal has to be versatile‘.

The other main difference with Asian food, although this is creeping more and more into what we eat over here too, is that the defining characteristic of the meal is not what is cooked, but how it is cooked. As Patricia and Edwin point out, ‘the true flavour of the dish may be determined by the cooking method, the sauce, the use of seasonings or the blending of ingredients. Indeed it may result from combination of any of these elements’.

In a perfect world, as the book points out, ‘when you combine wine with food, you are seeking a balance between these two elements‘. I know from personal experience that for many people this involves simply drinking and eating things that they like. For others, like me, it is a more agonised process of considering the nuances and hoping for a perfect combination.

I can be pretty good at putting food and wine together and achieve some superb matches, but I am the first to point out that this is often as a consequence of inspired guess-work as much as anything else and that is why I am so taken with this book. The authors really have put in a lot of serious experimentation and taken the luck out of the process. There are even experiments that the reader can do. So, in the comfort of their own home they can really get to grips with how wines and food interact and what works with what.

In order to makes sense of the food they have ignored the arbitrary political boundaries and instead studied the flavours in Asian foods to create a sort of sensory map or grid. This divides food up into five basic flavours: Fresh and Herbal, Savoury and Rich, Mild and Spicy and Light Smoky, Spicy & Smoky and Fiery and Sweet.

Similarly, by thinking about flavours, textures and weights of wines they came up with a classification to divide wine into seven categories: 1 – Crisp Juicy Whites and Dry Aromatic Wine, 2 – Juicy Whites, Medium rosés and Light Reds, 3 – Woody Whites and Soft-Tannin Reds, 4 – Light to Medium-Sweet Wines, 5 – Richly Sweet Wines, 6 – Red Wines with Chewy Tannin and 7 – Nutty and Rich Fortified Wines.

These classifications or categorisations are expanded and explained and then the bulk of the book takes the reader through a marvellous array of recipes together with a range of wine recommendations with each one. These are given in a very general way for the experienced food and wine matcher and in a much more specific manner to allow the beginner to get to grips with the system.

The whole book reads well and is clearly the culmination of a great deal of work, by which I mean eating and drinking. It looks lovely and is so richly illustrated with photographs of enticing dishes, bottles and vineyard scenes that reading it is nearly as good as travelling around Asia and experiencing the cuisine. Be warned though, there are lots of recipes together with tempting photographs of the finished dishes, so reading this book can seriously make you hungry.

Bordeaux Wine Guide – a user friendly reference book

Like many people who enjoy wine I’m a real hedonist. I like the good and sensual stuff of all types. Wine of course figures very high on the list – it’s how I make my living after all. Food is pretty important too though – in fact I hardly ever eat anything else. Like wine the love of food incorporates so much about culture, travel and history that enjoying different food helps make sense of the world and makes other people interesting rather than alarming – I often wonder what people who don’t like food actually do when they travel – answers on a postcard please.

If I can’t actually have some wine and food or travel somewhere interesting, then the next best thing is to read about it, so I love books. As a consequence I own a lot of books about exotic places, books about food and books about wine. I need a lot of wine books too as I constantly have to look things up and check facts and I don’t like to just rely on Wikipedia!

With Christmas coming I thought it might be nice to tell you about some books that I am enjoying and that all you other hedonists out there might find useful, either for your own pleasure or as gifts for others.

By the way if you were planning on giving me anything, please remember that I already have these!

Three books have caught my fancy of late and I will tell you all about them, but am starting with the one that is purely about wine:

Chris Kissack, aka the Wine Doctor, relaxing with something other than Bordeaux

Pocket Guide to the Wines of Bordeaux
by Chris Kissack
Published by MagBooks at £6.99
Also available from Amazon and on Kindle

I know Chris and like him too, he writes an amazingly fine and encyclopaedic wine website called The Wine Doctor, which I find a very useful resource. Well this is the more portable spin-off – no battery life, wifi or 3G signal required either, just a pocket. Actually my only quibble is with the size of this book, exactly how big are your pockets Chris? At 21 cm X 14.8 cm it doesn’t fit any of mine, but hey I’ll stick it in a bag – or perhaps a Christmas stocking.

Chris does write about other wine regions, but his great speciality is Bordeaux and as it is the largest fine wine region earth and the home of fine wine I can understand why. Just like his website, this book is a labour of love and it shows. Chris is steeped in the wines of Bordeaux (quite literally sometimes) he loves them with a passion so strong you cannot help but be swept along, what’s more he has an incredible eye for detail, so this book is full to bursting with useful information and the odd unexpected nugget. For instance I was unaware that the great Château Haut-Brion have 2 hectares of non-permitted grapes including Pinot Noir and Sangiovese.

In the main I would regard this as a book to refer to rather than sit down and read and I can imagine that it could become an indispensable work of reference for anyone who wants to get serious about the region. The contents are attractive and well laid out with clearly marked sections that have in depth, yet easily digested, chunks on all the topics you need for a working knowledge of the region or for buying Bordeaux wines – whether for drinking pleasure or investment.

Amongst the many good things in here is a detailed look at the vintages from 2003 to 2011 and brief notes on the rest back to 1990. There are profiles and histories of the Premier Cru Classé Châteaux, Chris’s personal selection of the top Bordeaux Châteaux for reds and the great sweet wines of Sauternes as well as his top tips for good value.

As if all that isn’t enough there are sections on how they grow the grapes and make the wines as well as chapters that give you sneaky little insights into all the appellations of the region and the various classifications, from the 1855 (official) to the 2011 (unofficial) along with Graves, St Émilion, Sauternes and Cru Bourgeois.

I had better stop heaping praise on Chris before his head totally explodes, but this is an excellent reference book and I intend to keep my copy handy. It contains pretty much anything you need to make your Bordeaux buying and drinking a less haphazard experience and is a perfect gift for those just starting to get into wine – especially Bordeaux.

I will tell you all about another couple of books very soon, so keep coming back.