Sunday, July 15, 2007

I'm back

Apologies for the lack of posts, but I was on holiday in France. What began as a trip to Normandy turned into a flight to the Venise Verte area of the Vendee (highly recommended) in order to find some sun,
Venise Verte
then a return via the Loire - where I can without reservation recommend the version of Cremant de Loire from Saumur, Saumur Brut (an absolutely fantastic champagne replacement - I couldn't tell the difference - and it's only £5 or less) of which I bought 24 bottles in various forms (white, rose, red) - and finally a very sunny Rouen, which was the biggest surprise of the holiday, being a beautiful, interesting and exciting city with an excellent lightshow on the catehdral (and their July 14th fireworks were good too). Also highly recommended.

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posted by Matthew @ 7/15/2007 05:42:00 PM Comments: 1

Friday, June 29, 2007

English wine

Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?

By drinking English wine, of course. That's my project for the summer, anyway. On the whole the quality is pretty good these days if you choose carefully. Prices are relatively high, however.

Thus I can certainly recommend this week's tipple, from Yearlstone vineyard near Tiverton in Devon. They do five wines - We bought two no.1s, and two no.5s, both of which are lovely. They have sold out of 2004 red wines, but - in my experience - English red wines aren't all that. If you can't get to Devon, you can buy these online here (though I've not tried the service).

One advantage of English whites is that they are reasonably low in ABV, these range from 10.5% to 11%. So you can have two bottles.

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posted by Matthew @ 6/29/2007 09:26:00 PM Comments: 3