Tuesday 15 November 2011

Style & Substance


Wandering around the wine merchants of London, I have recently noticed a trend in the way these shops are laid out. Once upon a time, the unsaid rule was that wines were displayed by country, as that's what has always been important. You might want “a good French wine”, for example, or something interesting from some “unusual part of the world”. But times are changing. Take a journey to London's more interesting wine merchants and you will find shops laid out very clearly by style and/or grape variety.

The conversation has changed from “where do you like your wine from?” - which I'm not convinced anyone who isn't an enthusiast truly understands - to “what style do you like?”. I don't know about you, but when I'm choosing a wine I usually already know if I want a full bodied red over a lighter one, or a dry and zesty white over a full and buttery one. I'm lucky enough to know which places in the world make wines in those styles, but these new layouts make it even easier to find a wine that fits in to what I had in mind.

The other interesting thing about laying out the wines in this way is that it helps to educate. If somebody comes into a shop and asks the usual “where are your Riojas?”, they get pointed towards the wines made from the Tempranillo grape and/or the medium-full bodied reds so they can see what other wines fit in with their tastes, hopefully making it easier for them to try something new.

This does however open up a couple of questions about terroir. You will hear wine enthusiasts and professionals preaching about how important terroir is - the land the wine has been grown on. The idea is that great wine producers help to impart terroir in their wine, getting the most out of the land rather than the grapes, a feeling of the place, flavours which represent the land. With the huge range of soil types and climate the world has to offer, does this mean arranging by country is intrinsically important?

The other side to the argument is based on modern wine making techniques, which appear to aim to get the best out of the grapes rather than the land. Take Bordeaux in France as an example. Old claret drinkers see this in action with the onslaught of 'Parkerisation'; Robert Parker, an American wine journalist whose points system has become very important in the wine world - his ratings even dictating the prices of wines, especially in Bordeaux - appears to have a particular taste. That his highest ratings go to the more concentrated and fuller bodied wines appears to have caused a change in the way the wines of Bordeaux have been made. Through modern techniques, winemakers have been able to get fuller bodied, more concentrated, brighter fruited wines (resulting in higher alcohol levels) in places that historically have made slightly lighter, more earthy styles.

These modern, fruit-forward styles of wine seem to be becoming much more popular. For me these wines show very little, if any character of their terroir. So has style become that much more important than place? Wine is being made without much character of place and people understand flavour style much more than place anyway. Are we seeing the end of terroir?

I hope not. When I try a wine that has a real sense of place it's exciting. I enjoy drinking the fermented juice of grapes and I want to taste that. Earthy, vegetal flavours, farmyardy aromas (wine is a farm product after all) and complex fruit flavours that change as you get through the glass are what is exciting about wine for me, not just purity of the fruit flavours, which, however nice, is rather boring.

I think terroir character has a place within style, and I believe people should be browsing with style in mind as flavour is really what it's all about at the end of the day. The variety of flavour you get in one place - take Italy as an example - makes it impracticable and unhelpful to lump all of the wines from that country together. And if you like full bodied reds, great – have a look at all these exciting places that make them.

Monday 7 November 2011

National Sausage Week: Beer & Sausage Matching

It was National Sausage Week last week, and as sausages are my favourite food (oh, their meaty, herby goodness!) I thought I had better honour this event with a good old food and beer matching experiment.

Originally, I wanted to try four classic styles of beer to get a real benchmark of sausage and beer matching, but after visiting my local beer merchant - the unpredictable but always interesting Kris Wines in Camden - I ended up with something completely different.

The ‘classic lambic’ box was instantly ticked by the excellent Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic Bio, although my plans for an English amber ale went a little skew-wiff as I ended up selecting instead Brew Dog's 5am Saint, their new-world hop infused version of a classic amber ale (i.e. not classic at all).

The American IPA I’d anticipated buying had to wait for another day in the face of couple of bottles of Belgium's stonkingly good – and very limited – De Struise Brouwers Ignis & Flamma IPA. By that point I had gone completely off-piste, and while Kris Wines had no rauchbier, they did have Flying Dog's Dog Schwarz, a smoked 'double lager' – not too far off I thought.


So that was the beer sorted – now for the sausages: Gloucester Old Spot pork and sage, free range pork and onion marmalade, and veal pork and fennel. As with the beer, choosing these was by no means an exact science – they just looked the best at the counter. I served them with garlic and parsley mash. spring greens, red onion gravy and apple crisps (well if you’re going to do it, you've got to do it properly). And so on to the tasting…

Cantillon 100% Geuze (5%)
Disappointingly, the beer’s tart apple flavours that I thought would nestle up nicely to the sweet sausages really battled with the caramel flavours they’d taken on during frying. It was quite nice with the only lightly herbed 'old spot' sausages, but on the whole the sourness was overpowering, and exacerbated rather than tempered the fat. I do think it's definitely worth trying lambic beers with other pork preparations though – perhaps sweet and sour pork, or chops.

Brew Dog 5am Saint (5%)
The fruity new-world hops really want to get amongst the sausages’ sweetness, but there is something about the spiky hops that doesn't quite gel. However the fruit and caramel notes from the slightly roasted malt goes very well with the sausages - matching so well it almost cancels itself out. A good all-rounder, but the very grassy and citrusy hops, while making the beer delicious on its own, aren’t quite perfect with sausages.

De Struise Brouwers Ignis & Flamma IPA (7%)
Now this is a seriously good beer that I could write a whole blog about on its own - but for now we're here to talk sausages. For an IPA, this is extremely well balanced, and the very fruity, herbacious hops snuggle right up next to the sweetness of the sausages, and hold hands delightfully with the herbs. Combine that with the round, biscuity, fruity malt flavours against the caramelised sausage skin and you have a seriously fun time which accentuates the taste of both the beer and the sausages – my favourite match yet.

Flying Dog Dog Schwarz (7.8%)
While certainly not as smoky as a proper rauchbier, The Dog Schwarz did however have a lovely roast coffee character with chocolate and raisin flavours and a little touch of liquorice, giving it more in common with an imperial stout. Now I know what you’re thinking –  doesn't sound like a sausage beer – and you would be right. Its extremely rich flavours almost completely overpower the sausages, although a light (albeit peaty, not bacony) smoky note in the background does come through eventually. It would have been great with beef sausages, kidney or rich game dishes, but keep it away from the pork.


Verdict
Belgian IPA is easily my new favourite sausage beer. When you get a drink that not only compliments the flavours of a dish but actually lifts them, you know you have a winner. Brew Dog's 5am Saint was so nearly there that I think a traditional English amber ale would have been perfect. Unsurprisingly, traditional English food and traditional English beer go together pretty well. For the sausage lovers, the Gloucester Old Spot pork and sage sausage was my favourite, a classic banger of serious high quality. Delicious.