Ares is a small lazy town about 45 minutes from Santiago De Compostella by taxi. I have visited the town four times due to my friend having a family base there. That might be the first excuse. The successive visits were to revisit the landscape, the bars, the beaches and, most importantly, the people.
The coastline around Galicia, parked so poignantly at the top of Portugal and looking sideways to Asturias and onto the Basque country, is haphazard and fraught with nature. The eye takes it in as if it were Cornwall overdosing on steroids. Ares itself is a sleepy town at first sight. That first sight is definitely the rub!
The inhabitants only pretend to sleep. In fact they take their legendary sleepy reputation quite seriously. The only thing is that I see very little evidence of it. The town can be circumnavigated on foot in twenty minutes and the incumbents are largely retired folk. They bustle around avoiding the rush of daylight and generally pretending to be closed no matter what trade they indulge in. However, come evening, they remove the dark glasses and stride to the nearest drinking establishment to meet the rest of their clan. The men are generally out first.
The bar that I always prefer to visit first is La Rueda. It is presided over by the fastidious and passionate wine man, “Peche” (I've no idea if this is how it is spelt but that is how it sounds). The bar has a narrow doorway, a small bar, minimum standing room and a ting television set cut into the wall (It was here on one of my early visit that I turned to see my good friend David Saxby making the Spanish news from Regents Park for staging 'The Chap Olympics'). Peche works with few tools but being the master craftsman he is, does exceptionally well enough to make this a bar I wished I found in every town I visited. He has one beer pump, one leg of very good serrano jamon, a huge slab of Manchego cheese and a wonderful selection of Rioja's, Ribera del Duero, Albarino's amongst others on offer. One stands at the bar and chats, often completely unaware of what the other is saying, but happy in the circumstance that one finds oneself. Over the last eight years I have visited and the welcome on return is warm and genuine. Peche reaches his hand out, waits for no orders but is only too pleased to spend his time very carefully and precisely cutting thin clippings of jamon for the plate. He then servers the cheese. We discuss the wines (with Ricardo interpreting) at length. The conversation opens up to visitors from the town who stop in, often in a hurry to sink a social drinks, say hello to all, attempt to pay for all our drinks by means of hospitality, before vanishing again into the dimming evening light.
Christmas has come upon me fast and
hard with little regard for my feelings or my advanced senses of
spacial awareness. No, in fact this mass of much or nothing has
washed over in successive meals, toys, toys and meals and many a
combination of salutatory drinks.
Not wanting to sound down hearted, I am
far from it, for I'm sat by a warm fire in a rural Cornish bolt hole
with the wines of my choosing at close call, and those of my familial
host readily advancing. We're planning a scour of the Cornish
environs for food and wine that starts tomorrow. St Kew Inn in St
Kew is tomorrow for lunch. An old favourite and one that should be
on everyone's list of Britain's top ten pub list. That followed by
the Three Mackerel in Falmouth. Great seafood with the namesake being
an obvious choice. I'll likely be starting with half a dozen Duchy's
and a bottle of SB from somewhere pleasant.
The wines chosen especially for this
sojourn are also enticing me:
The Marques De Vargas, 2003 from Rioja
in magnum format – should be lipliciously spectacular!
Erial, 2007, Bodegas Epifanio Rivera
from Ribera Del Duero- faves in the stemless Riedel's !!
Chateau Peymartin, Saint Julian, 2004
in magnum – licking and puckering
Clos Floridene, Graves, 2004 –
fingers crossed for decent fruit to balance the inevitable terrior!
There were more but there are now few
whites:
The Dr Wagner Riesling, Mosel, from
Waitrose – finished and beautiful
Saint Veran, Les Morats, 2008 –
Pouilly Fuisse style which is my secret private passion (love me
tender, love me taste!)
Diemersdal Chardonnay 2008, S Africa –
this was bought for the New Years Eve tasting to compare with the St
Veran. I opened a bottle tonight and three of us at the table loved
it (the others were not drinking it).
Other wines than have sneaked over the
precipice this Christmas have been the 2005 Muga Reserve, various
Grand Cru St Emilion (they seem to be everywhere) typically destined
by low price and abundance of production to be good quaffing wines,
and lots of sparkly wines – so varied they warrant another post.
As this week draws on then it is
everyone's duty who is able, to succour the wines at hand and in
someway report back how good or bad they are. Hopefully next year
will be the year of cross suggested wines! All wines were obtained from Majestic Borough (about to close her doors to the public), Jeroboams.co.uk and Waitrose.
The World Wine Tasting Corps embody a surreal mysticism based around
being able to extract profound descriptive words with which to hang the
evidence of their pleasure. It is an odd cultish thing. It is
something that when viewed from an external perspective, the
non-initiate views with certain amusement. Yet, there is an allure to
all this lyrical waxing. I know this because I know how much people
pay to take part in tutored tastings. Good wine tasting is indeed very
much fun and also very rewarding. To be able to take a big sniff and
say "Yeah, merlot driven right bank!" gives one a sense of knowing ones
taste buds. I like it!
But at what point do we cross the
line? For me it can be in a tasting when the stem holding maniac
starts to swirl, eye looming vertically down into the grape juice
looking for hints of divinity. Words are also swirling in the brain,
"... not too opaque... ruby... grassy... urine... straw..." and so on.
The colour of the wine can tell us certain things about the wine. In
most cases one has the bottle close to hand so more information can be
gleaned from that. In terms of enhancing pleasure, do these strange
rituals and pronounced postulations create cerebral ecstasy?
It's
been proven that the cost of a bottle (real or perceived) can certainly
enhance our pleasure in the drinking process. Many people drink
slower, savouring the experience. I tend to accelerate my pace
puckering and wincing my way to the end. I seldom analyse the
wine, listing out descriptive comparisons to fruit, veg and baby
puke. Sometimes, a flavour can be so pronounced it would be churlish
not to say it but I wonder why people spend so much time analysing what
is in the glass rather than appreciating the enhanced pleasure at that particular moment?
I've
only been thinking about this since buying some shampoo that smells
lovely to me. I was sniffing it in and having a good rinse thinking
how it smelt like wonderful Gewurtztraminer, when I was struck by
seeming illegality of describing something as a wine. Surely we are
cast with the task of finding descriptives for wine, not vice versa?
Any how, as much as I started conjuring up mental images of lychees and
what not, nothing quite gave me as much pleasure as thinking that I had
wonderful fine white wine running through my hair and scenting my body.
The search for the best tapas bars in London has begun. In the running so far are:
Brindisa (Borough, Soho, South Kensington)
Galicia (Portobello Road)
Meson Don Felipe (The Cut, Southwark)
Barcelona Tapas (City)
La Mancha (Putney)
After several feasting visits to various corners of Spain, the quality
and diversity of the tapas is undeniable. My personal favourite place
is San Sebastien (Donastia) in the Basque Country. The tapas available
in San Sebastien is mind bogglingly good. London has spawned many
restaurants offering damn good tapas and I am constantly on the look
out for exceptional and authentic places to pitch up at the bar in and
start ordering.
The first London Tapas bar Review will be posted this week following
the inaugral tasting. Myself and my Ventian Gallego dining companion
(a hybrid eating machine especially bred for this kind of work), Big
Ric, will be reporting from the front line, taking special interest in:
the variety of the menu, quality of individual classics and
specialalities, range, diversity and quality of wines on the list,
ambience, value for money and anything else that is deemed noteworthy.
If you have any suggestions to add to the list above then I'd love to
hear them. Please email me directly at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or on Twitter @bacchae
I have been recovering very slowly from the most boring bout of swollen throat, suets, phlegm and sinus congestion that we come to expect from this time of year. My motives in every action are geared towards the healing process. Hence my choice for some low-level Saturday night imbibing has turned out to be a bottle of Dr Bürklin-Wolf, 2007 Riesling, Trocken.
This wines medicinal qualities of alcohol & acidity react like tear gas to my foes and fine friends to myself. The crisp acidity gives a nice clean finish and there is even a little length in the familarly pleasurable taste. Riesling is one of my favourite varieties of grape and when I am wounded, she has the touch of Florence Nightingale. As she is given time to breathe, she opens up and makes one feel a touch special.
Well done Doctor Bürklin-Wolf!
Dr Bürklin-Wolf wines can be bought from Jeroboams Fine Wine for £11 a bottle or £9.90 each for twelve.
Drinking Róse is often (but not always) a no man’s land for me. It’s a place I go to but up on arrival I question the validity of my desire. Give me the mouth watering sharpness of a Mosel reisling or the buxom scents of a sassy syrah and I’m all over in it in a frenzy! Róse wine however, seldom arouses such excitement.
So when I received a bottle of róse port to taste recently I conceded to the novel appeal and left the actual tasting to due course. Then mark my twinkling eyes and pursed puckering lips when, to my surprise the róse port was a complex and sumptuously fruity hit.
The bright pink colour is accompanied by a nose of unmistakable fortified quality. I very much enjoyed the fruity complexity of flavours lingering on my palate. They’re nothing short of addictive (& not just to an old soak like me!), the richness and strength in alcohol parrying the cubic volume of the bottle (50cl).
Róse port is perfect for fine picnics, aperitifs, chilling to the side of your nightclub tabletop, or simply supping and succouring after a couple of light courses on a late summer evening!
Bob Bob Ricard, a
posh English diner in Soho, are launching their new reserve wine list in a few
weeks and they are the first high end restaurant of their calibre to guarantee
that they will add no more then a £50 surcharge on top of the cost of any of
their reserve wines. This is a pretty remarkable decision when you consider the
high end wines they are stocking and the price difference to those at other
venues (stocking the same bottles).
Highlights from the
wine list include:
Bob Bob Ricard will
be selling the 1995 L’Eglise Clinet for
£170 - it is currently on
sale at The Greenhouse, Mayfair
for £345
Bob Bob Ricard will
be selling the 1999 Bollinger Vielles Vignes
Francaises for £294
– it is on sale at Maze for £710
Bob Bob Ricard will
be selling the 1985 Haut Brion for
£318 whilst at Claridges it is £1000
Good Job Bob Bob, keep up the good work and may hordes of Vinophiles sing thee to thy cellar!
On Tuesday of last week I was smoldering my way through west London, the aghast biological thermostat being tempered only by dripping perspiration when I hit upon an idea. In order to cool and refresh my evaporating carcass I thought it would be wise to nurse it from within with some Fine Wine .
Thus I entered the store of Jeroboams on Holland Park avenue and gandered my keen eyes over the chilled wine selection feeling a thirst for something not overly fruity but with plenty of grip and cool fresh acidity.
I found all this (with a little assistance from the knowledgeable staff) in the 2006 URZIGER WURZGARTEN, Riesling Spatlese, Dr Loosen, Mosel at £22 a bottle.
Beautiful crisp minerality with gentle soft citric fruits paved the way to restoration. My body temperature cool, my mind soothed, there was nothing more to do but go home and relax.
The first bar that I always see on entering the Calle San Jeronimo is the Ganbara where one can ogle and let the eyes pop and the mouth dampen to the sight of fresh pintxos such as grated egg with mayonnaise, king prawns and anchovy, alongside such delicacies as truffles and rather odd looking brains that turn out to be the roe of something weird. This is a great bar to get into early and watch the pros preparing the pintxos and then picking them off as soon as they touch the bar. You’ll know when it’s time to move on… when standing room has vanished and the bar is stuffed full of pintxo aficionados gorging themselves!
Txapula – The skewers at the Txapula bar on the Calle Calbeton are outstanding and this remains one of my most memorable feasting joints in ....
The coastline around Galicia, parked so poignantly at the top of Portugal and looking sideways to Asturias and onto the Basque country, is haphazard and fraught with nature. The eye takes it in as if it were Cornwall overdosing on steroids. Ares itself is a sleepy town at first sight. That first sight is definitely the rub!
The bar that I always prefer to visit first is La Rueda. It is presided over by the fastidious and passionate wine man, “Peche” (I've no idea if this is how it is spelt but that is how it sounds). The bar has a narrow doorway, a small bar, minimum standing room and a ting television set cut into the wall (It was here on one of my early visit that I turned to see my good friend David Saxby making the Spanish news from Regents Park for staging 'The Chap Olympics'). Peche works with few tools but being the master craftsman he is, does exceptionally well enough to make this a bar I wished I found in every town I visited. He has one beer pump, one leg of very good serrano jamon, a huge slab of Manchego cheese and a wonderful selection of Rioja's, Ribera del Duero, Albarino's amongst others on offer. One stands at the bar and chats, often completely unaware of what the other is saying, but happy in the circumstance that one finds oneself. Over 
the last eight years I have visited and the welcome on return is warm and genuine. Peche reaches his hand out, waits for no orders but is only too pleased to spend his time very carefully and precisely cutting thin clippings of jamon for the plate. He then servers the cheese. We discuss the wines (with Ricardo interpreting) at length. The conversation opens up to visitors from the town who stop in, often in a hurry to sink a social drinks, say hello to all, attempt to pay for all our drinks by means of hospitality, before vanishing again into the dimming evening light.
Christmas has come upon me fast and
hard with little regard for my feelings or my advanced senses of
spacial awareness. No, in fact this mass of much or nothing has
washed over in successive meals, toys, toys and meals and many a
combination of salutatory drinks.
The World Wine Tasting Corps embody a surreal mysticism based around
being able to extract profound descriptive words with which to hang the
evidence of their pleasure. It is an odd cultish thing. It is
something that when viewed from an external perspective, the
non-initiate views with certain amusement. Yet, there is an allure to
all this lyrical waxing. I know this because I know how much people
pay to take part in tutored tastings. Good wine tasting is indeed very
much fun and also very rewarding. To be able to take a big sniff and
say "Yeah, merlot driven right bank!" gives one a sense of knowing ones
taste buds. I like it! 
The search for the best tapas bars in London has begun. In the running so far are:
I have been recovering very slowly from the most boring bout of swollen throat, suets, phlegm and sinus congestion that we come to expect from this time of year. My motives in every action are geared towards the healing process. Hence my choice for some low-level Saturday night imbibing has turned out to be a bottle of Dr Bürklin-Wolf, 2007 Riesling, Trocken.
Drinking Róse is often (but not always) a no man’s land for me. It’s a place I go to but up on arrival I question the validity of my desire. Give me the mouth watering sharpness of a Mosel reisling or the buxom scents of a sassy syrah and I’m all over in it in a frenzy! Róse wine however, seldom arouses such excitement.
The first bar that I always see on entering the Calle San Jeronimo is the Ganbara where one can ogle and let the eyes pop and the mouth dampen to the sight of fresh pintxos such as grated egg with mayonnaise, king prawns and anchovy, alongside such delicacies as truffles and rather odd looking brains that turn out to be the roe of something weird. This is a great bar to get into early and watch the pros 
preparing the pintxos and then picking them off as soon as they touch the bar. You’ll know when it’s time to move on… when standing room has vanished and the bar is stuffed full of pintxo aficionados gorging themselves!
