Sedimental

As colder weather has returned to us this week, grab a blanket, snuggle up and enjoy a warming glass of Malbec. This rich smooth Malbec from Argentina has a deep ruby colour with spiced plum and red berry fruit flavours.  Full bodied but soft in an appealing robust, rounded style that’s perfect for red meat.  A must have for Sunday lunch with the family. The winery in Maipu, Mendoza, benefits from year round winds from the Andes bringing in hot and dry air which improves the vines and leads to uniform ripening resulting in this extremely pleasing wine.

The sun is on its way. Maybe you’ll have lunch in the garden or a picnic at the beach… so it has to be a rosé for the weekend. This is a pretty pale pink from Claude Vialade, the “femme du vin”. As strong feminine figures are making the headlines more and more, here is a woman producing some great wines. Claude is the owner and founder of Domaines Auriol, also makers of the Maison Vialade range from Corbières in Southwest France. The wine has lively fresh red fruit flavours and a crisp dry finish making it a great choice...

Trees are naked, hedgerows sparse, birds forage frantically and hedgehogs hibernate. The world outside my window is holding its breath, recent mornings gripped in ice where sheep crunch through frost and bleat vapour in the frozen air. You can almost feel the year tilt upon its fulcrum, everything is waiting. Days slowly extend and signal renewal is near; we have passed the nadir and will awake to inhale the fresh atmosphere of spring. Excuse the waffle. It’s that time of year and it tends to make one rather reflective. It is also a time when we look at our list...

It has a lot to cope with, the mouth. Not content merely being the portal via which we nourish ourselves, the aperture also contorts to compose facial expression, assists in the passage of respiratory and other gasses, sculpts the sound of our speech and most critically of all – provides a laboratory for the analysis of flavour. There are numerous additional popular applications; but the Blog format limits space so we can take them as read.   But what do you drink when the palate is weary? You can only ask so much of one mouth in a day, and...