Booze Noel

Ho ho ho it's another blog about what to drink at Christmas! Since everyone is having fun writing about their favourite festive tipple, I thought I would get stuck in. Traditionally Christmas is the time to try and drink as many different drinks as possible throughout the day, justifying it with the plethora of different foods you get to shovel down your neck. So I will feature a few of my favourites and generally what they go with pretty well. Imagine you've just woken up extremely thirsty on Christmas morning and we'll start from there.

In both mine and my fiancé’s families it's traditional to start off with Vermouth and lemonade pretty much as soon as everyone has woken up. I recommend getting the cheapest vermouth you can find blended three parts to one of Value Lemonade. Put a bit of lime in it to make it look fancy.

Next up you might want to have a stubby bottle of French lager or maybe another Martini – some like to have a G&T, but it's up to you. If you insist on ploughing straight into the chocolates Santa got you then I recommend hitting the miscellaneous Irish liqueur early as they make a great combo.

In my family we have Christmas dinner at lunchtime and this is when the serious drinks start to come out. If you're classy enough to have a prawn cocktail starter (come on, you know it's actually really nice and a bit of kitsch never hurt anyone) crack a good bottle of fizz. I like a good Cremant de Bourgogne, a French sparkling wine made in the same style as champagne, half the price and just as much quality and flavour.

Next for the main event. Your mother has spent forever cooking what should be one of the best meals of the year so it's important not to spoil it with terrible wine. My top tip for Christmas dinner has to be Pinot Noir. The grapes cherry flavours, earthy notes and light body lend themselves excellently to poultry, cranberry sauce, stuffing and gammon. If you're having a classic turkey roast, go for a something French as it's a little lighter, often with savoury notes. If you're having something a bit richer, go for a Californian or New Zealand pinot as they are more robust. White drinker? A big buttery Chardonnay is ideal, or try something fresher and slightly nutty like a Fiano from Italy for something different.

To finish, dessert wine is a great alternative to an actual dessert as you are probably pretty full at this point. Monbazillac is a great choice. Situated a little further south than the famous Sauternes in Bordeaux and made in the same style, but often much cheaper. Fresh, citrussy and honeyed, it'll clear your palate perfectly. If you are up for something a little richer, go with a Pedro Ximinez Sherry (PX), a deep, dark, luscious, caramel and raisin filled treat. Both these will also go fantastically with the cheese board later.

After dinner you might want to have a nice nap through the Queen's speech ready to get back on it in the evening.

At this point all bets are off. You could decide to head straight for the array of dodgy liqueurs you never usually buy but feel you should as it's Christmas. I recommend having a couple of beers. My festive favourites are the Belgian Christmas Beers or the great selection of darker British Christmas Ales, which are usually spiced and really taste like Christmas. If you want something light and gluggable, good Czech Pilsner or hoppy American Pale Ales are great for swigging whilst playing with your new toys.

After everyone has let their dinner go down and gone for a walk/had an argument/played Monopoly and Cluedo/watched several 80's Christmas films – delete where appropriate – it's time for more food.

A classic spread of hams. cheese and pickles is a thing of beauty and a lot of fun to match with drinks. This is probably a good time to crack out the snowballs (advocaat & lemonade); they don't go remotely well with any of the above food but are delicious and essential nonetheless. My top wine choice is a nice Beaujolais. No, not that horrible nouveau rubbish, I'm talking about one of the top areas (or Crus) of the region like a chunky, dark cherry filled Morgon or a flowery Brouilly. With plenty of juicy acidity to cut through, it's the perfect partner to cured meats and the new hero red wine for Christmas fayre. If you're still on the beer a hoppy, malty Double IPA is great, lifting fat and adding new dimensions to the food as it goes.

After tea every household should get the cheeseboard out and don't forget the 'biscuits for cheese' pack you bought when it was on special offer two months ago. This is the ideal time to bring out the port. Port and blue cheese is a match made in heaven and the perfect tipple to sozzle your way through the Eastenders Christmas special. A good LBV (late bottled vintage) Port does the job nicely, with more complexity and flavour than a basic ruby but without the price-tag of vintage port. An alternative to port and a new champion (or old classic depending on the way you look at it) for the cheeseboard is Barley Wine. A very strong beer with a massive malt content which can be just as warming as a port but not quite as boozy. Hoppy American ones add citrus flavours while classic English ones are biscuity, making them pair great with lots of different cheeses, rather than just the strong blue stinky ones.

If you're still going by this time, firstly I commend your stamina! Secondly it's clearly the time to hit the single malt whiskey. The ultimate winter warmer and a sure thing to knock you out after a long day of festivities – or make charades even more obscure than it usually is.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Beer Father

Everyone has somebody who introduced them to something they are now passionate about, whether it's the person who took you to a gallery for the first time, your first guitar teacher or someone who gave you that glass of wine which made sparks go off in your taste buds.

The person who is responsible for igniting my passion for beer – which as a result opened the way for me to get fully into the flavours of wine – is my Dad.

He used to take us on holiday every year, and after a while my brother, sister and I started noticing a theme. From Brugges to Amsterdam and Prague to Berlin, everywhere we went seemed to have a thriving and historic beer culture. While all my friends where drinking cheap lager, I was acquiring a taste for something altogether more flavourful.

I now have a fantastic mutual interest with my Dad and brilliantly get invited round his house to try a plethora of excellent beers he has picked up, often ones I've never heard of. Below is the line up from my last visit. You'll see why I am lucky and hugely thankful for having a Dad who not only has great taste but a very extensive knowledge of our favourite fermented malt beverage.

Sierra Nevada - Torpedo (7.2%)

Classic US IPA. Dry, citrussy, and full of piney hops. Went perfectly with the delicious enchilada pie my stepmother made.

3 Fourquets - Lupus (8.5%)

Like a supercharged Saison! Herbal, bright and slightly sweet with some wonderfully balanced hop bitterness. It has that classic Belgian yeasty aroma that takes you right back to Brugges whenever you smell it.

Birrifico Bruton – Momus (7.5%)

There's something about Italian craft beers that ooze class. Momus is in a 'dubbel' style but as far away in flavour as Italy is from Belgium. The palate is unbelievably clean, with flavours of Turkish delight, coffee and dried fruit.

Goose Island – Fleur (5.2%)

Goose Island's Belgian brown inspired ale, Fleur is paler and apparently brewed with hibiscus and kombucha tea. I didn't detect the tea but it did have some lovely floral and dried fruit flavours. What I really enjoyed about this beer is that Goose Island have achieved those great brettanomyces funky aromas and sour flavour which freshens the whole thing up.

Nogne O IPA (7.5%)

A really excellent and original IPA. Darker than most and halfway to a black IPA even, it has tons of raisin flavours in the nice and firm malt base, balancing the heavy, piney aromatic hops wonderfully. One of the best IPAs I have had for a while.

Westmalle Tripel (9.5%)

I always forget how good this beer is, and it's the perfect way to finish an awesome day of drinking. Fruity, spicy and perfumey with punchy alcohol and balancing bitterness. A classic! This was accompanied by a much needed ham and mustard sandwich, which went amazingly well. Honestly, a near perfect match – you have to try it! 

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.

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.

Rack Draining Wine Reviews pt1 – Wickham Vineyard Special Reserve

This is the first instalment of the first regular feature on this blog: 'rack-draining wine reviews'. I am getting married and moving house within 6 months of each other next year, so my booze tokens are depressingly low. The unfortunate result of this is that I'm going to have to start draining my wine rack of all the little delights I have been laying down to age and do their thing. To justify this culling of my little dusty friends in the darkest corner of our kitchen I will be lamenting how much a few more years laying down would have benefited these wines, and also hopefully telling you how delicious they are.

It's a sunny Sunday afternoon and I'm meeting up with good friends at the excellent BYO Lebanese canteen Comptoir Libanais so what better opportunity to crack something half decent?

Comptoir Libanais is a small but growing chain well worth a visit. Our service was superfast and cheerful among the colourful, relaxed surroundings. But the food defies the lighthearted décor; a plate of warm flatbreads with generous dollops of humous, yoghurt and a subtly smoked baba ganoush was a comforting shared starter, and our mains of zingy chicken and green olive stew and a hearty lamb tagine – delightfully tender – were great value at under £8 each (including rice or cous cous). Ideal, I thought, for the first wine I pulled kicking and screaming from the rack...

Wickham Vineyard's Special Reserve red (£12.50) is a blend of rondo and pinot noir grapes from Hampshire in the south of England. Rondo is a popular grape for English reds and rosés due to its affinity to the colder climate, though I find it often makes odd wines with a bright purple colour and very confected flavours which I'm not too fond of.

This wine, luckily, has plenty of pinot noir in the blend, which, on it's own is now actually making hard-to-find but really fantastic wines in England. I have to say though the rondo in the blend does deserve some credit, adding a well received juiciness. It's deep purple in colour with some classic earthy and ripe cherry aromas from the pinot noir. On the palate it has some good grainy tannins which were a nice surprise, along with lots of acidity, which you would expect from a wine from this cool a climate. That acidity combines with the fruit character to bring out bags of juicy blueberry and redcurrant flavours. It paired with my delicious lamb tagine rather well, latching on to the prunes and apricots in the dish wonderfully. It didn't go too badly with my fellow diners' chicken stew either, snuggling up to the green olives in the dish.

It could have lasted happily another year in the rack but I don't think it would have evolved a huge amount more. So, no hard feelings this time; lovely wine, drink young, and don't feel bad about draining it from the rack.

Craft Beer and Train Stations

I start my first foray into blogging full up on delicious food and slightly inebriated from even more delicious beer - the result of a fantastic day of beer exploration and great company.

To set the scene, I am lucky enough to work in the drinks industry (mainly wine) and had been tasked to source a few beers to stock from local brewers due to my vocal passion on the subject. Living in London, this opens up a world of breweries from the tiniest micro breweries to big national brands. I felt it important to find something truly local and truly interesting to deliver to our customers. In this quest and limited by quantity, I found two brewers who fit the bill. Both very new, and both very local: Camden Town Brewery and the brand new London Fields Brewery.

Myself and a colleague of mine, a keen home brewer and a veteran of the wine industry, descended on London Fields overground station to visit the latter. Arriving at the brewery - which, like Camden Town and fellow London craft brewery Kernel, sits underneath railway arches - we can see this is a small operation, with a few chirpy looking chaps mucking in and bustling about. And so on to the beers:

London Fields Landlord: A little unoriginal in the name, but it certainly delivers in flavour. A classic best bitter style with a lovely coppery colour, good round malt background and some nice aromatic hop notes balancing it out. This beer recently got third at the St Albans beer festival and for only their third brew, that's really saying something. It's either a fluke, or these guys really have something going on. Next, let's see what they can offer in the way of pale ale.

Hackney Hopster: Everything you want out of a nice hoppy pale ale! Good balance of soft pale ale malt and aromatic hops giving tropical fruit flavours and a citrus zing, with a surprisingly long and well structured bitter finish. Already, they have achieved a great balance of early bittering hops and late aromatising dry hops. I really can't wait to see how this brewery evolves.

After having our minds blown by an early cask sample of the 'London Fields Session Ale' showcasing the Galaxy hop (passion fruit all over the place - I love that hop) we trecked along to canal to our next stop - the seriously up-and-coming Camden Town Brewery.

This brewery is a different kettle of fish. London Fields is brand new, still experimenting and just getting to grips with their brews. In comparison Camden Town, situated underneath Kentish Town overground station is a serious operation. They are concentrating on three main beers, honing them to perfection and using the best technology available. Let's not forget, these guys opened for business only last year and are still very small compared to some of the better known craft brewers. They have flavour at the front of their minds and only minor usage of (vegan friendly) filtering - and zero pasteurisation - ensures they keep it that way. I'm going to talk about just two of their beers which we hope to stock; Camden Hells Lager and Camden Wheat Beer.


The Lager is mega-clean and very refreshing which is exactly what you want from a lager. This beer is not about big flavours, but what's there is very well balanced. Delicate toasty notes and subtle bitterness mingle with some light fruit flavours. But the real point of this beer is to be refreshing and it's a perfect thirst quencher.

The Wheat Beer is a little different. This is a flavour bomb. In the German hefeweizen style it displays all of the banana and bubblegum notes you would hope for, from the aroma to the palate. Mix in some subtle cirtus and bready flavours and a lovely round body and you have a really great quality wheat beer giving the Germans a serious run for their money.

After being forced to stay for another round and sampling their zippy Pale Ale straight from the tank (it's a hard life), it was time to move on to our next port of call. If you're ever in the Camden/Kings Cross area, you need to wander up the Euston Road and pop in the Euston Tap, just outside Euston station. My favourite craft beer bar and on this particular day, showcasing 8 Thornbridge beers on keg and cask. A massive bonus and the most excellent way to finish off one of the best days of beer exploration I have had.

Derbyshire brewery Thornbridge have become a benchmark in the British craft beer scene after only 6 years and it was a real treat to try their beers alongside each other. My two favourites had to be the Sequoia American style pale ale, and Raven, their take on a Black IPA. Sequoia was the real star of the show, mouthwateringly refreshing and dry hopped showing tons of aromatic pine and tropical flavours with a body like a feather duvet. The black IPA was a nice surprise. Often black IPAs are a little too toasty for me (I know it's kind of the point) but I find it clashes with the big hop flavours. Not this one, however - far more chocolate and coffee notes, which alongside the up-front hop bitterness was more like fresh cocoa than burnt toast.

So, blog number one and a day to remember. I will be updating regularly about my explorations of beer, wine and food so keep checking back. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jimmyhatherley