Champagne A R Lenoble 2012 rosé

The NLC chef, Ken Milne, suggested it would be more contemporary to have the scallops with ham, but in the end we stayed the course with smoked salmon, as requested by Churchill culinary biographer, Catherine Heyrendt-Sherman. 

This is delicate rosé, having a very low dosage of 3g/litre (sugar added)

A R Lenoble’s Rosé Terroir comes from the excellent 2012 and was elegant, with summer red fruits that dealt effortlessly with the oiliness of the seafood. It was fun to see the look of pleasure on my fellow tasters as the slight apprehension of the pairing was met with the pleasure of the experience. 

Michael Edwards: The 2012 AR Lenoble is a fantastic wine but greatly helped by the fact that it is 2012, some say one of the best vintages for 50 years for pinot noir. It had great precision, energy and wonderful flavour, it was also very delicate. I thought [the pairing with the scallop and salmon] worked very well!

Brendan Barratt: “The A.R. Lenoble rosé was brilliant, really really good! The scallop wrapped in smoked salmon was brilliant. It is more modern now to wrap scallops in bacon but I would say wrapping them in salmon is… better!”

 

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Last week a picture was posted on Twitter of vines in Shabo, a large estate that lies to the west of Odesa on southern Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline. The image seemed benign at face value but the reality, of course, is that the city of Odesa has been bracing itself for attack by Russian forces. 

 

As COVID-19 conspires with the grimmest of winds and rain to force a societal retreat behind our own front doors, the word ennui springs to mind. The muddle of displeasure is pierced when Natalia hands me a large bulbous glass of a liquid I do not recognise.

 

 

Britain’s lamentable exit

On the eve of Britain’s official departure from the EU, my partner and I decided to explore a small town on the Italian Riviera where thewintry cold doesn’t feel so much like cold war bite.

I had warned my significant other that I would be having an inverse departure party, a release of the sanity valve if you like!

 

Sitting inside the ancient castle walls inside the town of Soave, a short drive from Verona in northern Italy, the unique slightly almond aroma of the indigenous grape, Garganega, rises gently from my glass. The castle sprawls up the side of an extinct volcano that gives the region its variant soil structures that mark out the better quality of Soave wines.

 

Tanisha Townsend decided to move to Paris 4 years ago after regularly passing through the city en route to the world’s most famous vineyards. In fact, it was about 2 years ago at the Printemps de Champagne Bouzy Rouge tasting in Reims that I saw (who we shall now refer to as) GirlMeetsGlass chirpily speaking to her web followers on Snapchat.

 

The cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, the final resting place of Saint James, rises out of the landscape, infested with antiquity. The rambling steep streets give way to shafts of dramatic light, emblazoned chapels, and tightly packed tapas bars, dusty, as old novels pressed together in antiquarian bookshops.

 

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