Wine Challenge - Round 3

It seems ages ago since I started planning our 100 wine and cheese challenge http://aimetus.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/a-huge-challenge-for-2014.html We've visited North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa so this round was dedicated to Europe (but not France as that comes next)

And so to Europe -

I had sourced 20 wines from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Germany but due to this round being in holiday season we were only a group of 10 so I saved the five best wines for our final tasting in November. This will be a celebration tasting with bubbly and wines costing a little more than the £4.50 budget per bottle for each of the other rounds.

The original line up of 20 wines

We started the evening with two bubblies - a Cava and a German sparkling rosé. I was quite surprised to find the Cava a new tasting for most people and they were surprised to discover it is made exactly the same way as champagne, tastes fantastic but costs 'slightly less'.

These are the whites (and sparkling rosé) we tasted first:

Montcadi Cava - Spain - this was from Morrison's £4.99, a lovely light cava.

Prince de Sabatier - Germany - a blended sparkling rosé which I discovered on the shelf in our local Co-op £4.00

Liebfraumilch - Germany - a well loved favourite with the ladies, and a great buy at £3.29 from Lidl

Hock - Germany - a jolt from the past for most who had not had this wine for many years. Everyone was surprised how easy drinking it was and at £3.99 from Morrison's will be on a few people's 'patio' drinking list.

Dino Chardonnay - Italy - a good example of chardonnay from Tesco £3.74

Canti Chardonnay - Italy - this bottle was donated by out local Tesco store and was the preferred chardonnay of the two.

Las Primas Sauvignon Blanc - Spain - over the tastings people have come to prefer sauvignon blanc to chardonnay and this was another favourite of the night, £3.37 Tesco

Soave - Italy - a first for many but far too light for most, a good buy at £3.99 from Morrison's

After all these whites it was cheese time - and what a lot of cheese there was as we had catered for 20. The challenge is to also try 100 cheeses and it was getting harder to find 20 new cheeses to try but we did.

20 cheeses with their flag labels

Our 20 cheeses were:

• Igor gorgonzola
• Morrison's NUME 50% reduced fat chive & onion soft cheese
• Morrison's NUME 50% reduced fat garlic & herb soft cheese
• Morrison's Mexicana sweet chilli cheddar
• Dairylea triangles
• Morrison's Somerset brie
• Morrison's Scottish mature coloured cheddar
• Go Dutch edam
• Morrison's mature cheddar and spring onion
• Castello Danish blue
• Morrison's Mexicana cheese
• Morrison's mini camembert
• Morrison's gouda
• Morrison's double Gloucester with onion & chives
• Morrison's Welsh mature cheddar slices
• Primula original cheese
• Babybel mini original
• Morrison's mild white cheddar
• Morrison's Austrian smoked cheese
• Almette light soft cheese

The gorgonzola was very popular as was Morrison's gouda, although their Mexicana was a little hot for some. We did have a chuckle at Dairylea triangles and Primula cheese in a tube, back to our younger days.

It was rosé wine next and I couldn't do a European tasting without one of the most famous rosé - if only for the bottle shape.



Marqués de Caranó garancha, shiraz - Spain - quite a deep rosé that wasn't too sweet, £3.67 Tesco

Mateus rosé - Portugal - loved by all, another flash back to the past £3.74 Tesco

Only two rosé wines this time but another pause for a little more cheese and to draw the raffle. We've been so lucky with our prizes, I have had many items donated and have found a few wine related gifts in my 'pressie' cupboard at home. The Paddock wine was from Calais Wine Superstore (if you've been following our challenge you'll remember they sent a box a six) and the mini Friexenet was from Tesco - thanks to both companies.

Raffle prizes

Just 5 reds to finish, as I mentioned I 'saved' some for our November finale. It is always the whites and rosé that the ladies prefer and the men the reds, so by now the chaps are ready for their favourites.

Valencia - Spain - this wine was donated by my Mum as she had won it in a raffle and doesn't like red wine. It was an easy drinking blend.

Revero Tinto - Spain - the label on this blend was very striking £3.00 Tesco

Las Primas Temparillo - Spain - a lighter red from Tesco £3.37

Canti Sangiovese Melot - Italy - this was donated by our local Tesco store. It was a deeper red with a touch of spice.

Campo Viejo Rioja - Spain - this was a special bottle as it was donated by two of our group members to raise a toast to their first grandchild, Mollie.

Rioja is a deep red wine and I wanted to bring out the rich flavour so I had some chorizo for everyone to try. First a sip without, then the spicy sausage, then more wine - everyone was amazed at the difference. Some had not tried either spicy sausage or rioja before feeling both were too strong. It's been great to see everyone learn more about wine and food as we've done this challenge - discovering not all grapes taste the same, wine is different from different places and how wine matches to some foods. The rioja and chorizo was a hit, especially with Mollie's proud grandparents.

Special thanks for this round to:

Calais Wine Superstore

Tesco

Jan and Keith Cornford

Beveley and Alan Mycock

The donations of wine and raffle prizes is a HUGE help with this challenge as it is difficult with a £4.50 budget for wine. Our next tasting is France and we're hoping to bring some home from our holidays to include in the selection, the cheese too.

Cheers !!

London & Paris

It has just been our 25th Anniversary and to celebrate Hubby and I did a two city holiday - London & Paris. The weather in both cities was absolutely glorious and we had an amazing time. Those of you who follow me on facebook will have seen our highlights already - I will however be adding a few details in as I blog away.

Friday dawned and Ruby packed her bone ready to see her friends at Witherley Kennels - she loves the ladies there so we have no worries whilst away. By the time Hubby was home (early finish Fridays) our bags were packed and we were soon on the way to the station for our train to London.

We always travel in style and this was no exception - gin and tonics on board the London Midland to Euston was a perfect way to start our travels.

G & T on the train

We were staying at the new Novotel at Wembley - it felt a bit odd passing it on the way down to get an underground train back the way we came. This is a new hotel in the Accor chain and it was lovely - breakfast and service was perfect.

There is a huge outlet centre next to Wembley stadium and after a drink at TGI Fridays (cocktail for me of course) we went to Handmade Burger for dinner. We have not been to this chain before and will definitely be visiting again - the choice was amazing. Hubby ordered at the bar and when he came back commentated on the staff being really friendly - so friendly they brought us a complimentary bottle of Prosecco to celebrate our anniversary and later free puds too - such kindness, thank you.

Cheers at Handmade Burger

We had a great time on Saturday in London - first stop was BBC Broadcasting House at Portland Place. I do enjoy the BBC news and weather and it was great to see the building. We enjoyed a Caffé Nero coffee sitting in the plaza that is right outside the ONE Show studio, it's where they do their outside broadcasts. I managed to get a photo of us in the reflection of their window.

Reflection in The ONE Show window

We both love London and enjoyed strolling along the busy streets, stopping at Pandora where Hubby bought me a beautiful bracelet. We paused at All Bar One in Regent Street for some lunch before heading down to Trafalgar Square to listen to West End Live.

Hubby surprised me with six beautiful cupcakes complete with silver candles but we didn't light them for fear of evacuating the hotel !

Cupcakes with silver candles from my gorgeous Hubby

Saturday night we went to a small greek restaurant 4 Lanterns and had their Meze meal which was a selection of mall dishes. It was the biggest meal I've eaten in ages - all little dishes with small tapas style food but in all nearly 20 dishes - grazing for nearly two hours.

We had a great time in London - lots of photos (cheesy selfies galore) - you can see more in my London Flickr album but this is my favourite photo from our time in our capital city.

Happy in the City

 And so to Paris - up bright and early Sunday morning leaving plenty of time to enjoy a peaceful coffee upstairs at St Pancras station before boarding our Eurostar train to Paris. It's a lovely way to travel, reserved seats so no standing, comfy ride, so fast with great scenery along the way. It was all finished off perfectly with gin and tonics to toast the start of our French trip.

We have been to Paris before but this was the first time arriving at Gare du Nord - it's a huge building. Our hotel was just 15 minutes walk away and very easy to find. We were Le Marais area of Paris with its many bars and cafes and when we arrived full of the sounds of live football - the World Cup really means 'world'. Over our few days we ate at a couple of local restaurants; salads, burgers, pizza, fries - typical foreign food hee hee. We did have some lovely French meals too, they are very good at sauces and café gourmands :)

Monday was our busiest and most tiring day - we started at The Louvre. The courtyard is breath-taking with the huge glass pyramid, never mind the beautiful works of art inside. We did see the Mona Lisa and many other famous pieces, as well as visiting the stunning. Napoleon III state rooms.

In the courtyard

Napoleon III state room

Napoleon III dining room

The Louvre glass pyramid

One of my 'must do' things has been to walk the Champs Elysees and look from The Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and vica versa. It was a beautiful day weather wise and we a slow stroll, a mere 3.9 km, pausing at for ice cream at the octagonal fountain.  This was the view, it did make me cry as I had wanted to see this for so many years.

Octagonal fountain - Place de la Concorde -
Champs Elysees- Arc de Triomphe 

You can go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, the view of Paris would be amazing but it was not open the day we visited, although we did stand underneath it. It was such a sunny day we decided to walk back tour hotel, just one road on the map, a road that was over 4km. We paused for a beer on the way, so exhausted we happily paid 8 euros each - ouch. It was a fabulous start to our holiday but we must have walked nearly 10km.

Tuesday was our anniversary, we'd taken family cards to open and I finally wore my new bracelet. I surprised Hubby with a new watch but it was a little large so he couldn't wear his gift.

Metro time, we did enough walking the day before, to La Tour Eiffel where we took a river cruise along the Seine. We passed all the famous sites; Grande Palais, Notre Dame, Louvre, La Chapelle. As it was a special day we took the champagne option and enjoyed a glass of bubbly as we cruised along.

Cheers - Happy Anniverary

La Tour Eiffel

Grande Palais

Another reflection shot of us on the River Cruise

It was so lovely cruising along in the Parisian sun, afterwards we 'metro'd' to the latin quarter for lunch before strolling around the Ile de la Cité where Notre Dame & la Chapelle are. We didn't visit as the queues were long and we have visited ND before. Tuesday night we took a small picnic, with a bottle of our favourite champagne Nicolas Feuillatte, to St Bernard's Quay and sat by the Seine enjoying the Midsummer Evening. According to the travel brochures Paris has fireworks on June 24th and there were many other groups of people picnicking so we waited in anticipation. By 11.15 no fireworks so obviously Paris did not want to celebrate with us - unsure of the Metro times and not wanting to be out late in the city we returned to the hotel - I still don't know if the fireworks happened or not but we had a lovely evening watching the cruise boats go by.

Picnic by The Seine

Wednesday was another cruise day, this time two and a half hours on the Canal Saint Martin. We took the boat at Bastille and it travels through the Bastille vaults which is 2km long and travels right under the Place de la Bastille and it's towering July Column. The cruise continues up four sets of double locks (a total height of 24 metres), swing bridges, one bridge that just rises up horizontally and into the huge Bassin de la Villette. It was another great day, the boat did sell our favourite bubbles but a little too much at 50 euros so we settled for a bottle of one of our favourite wines, Cheverney, you don't see it on sale often so we were very pleased to find it on our special holiday.

All aboard - just about to go through the vault -
we travelled right under the July Column

The locks filled up quite quickly

Bassin de la Villette

We had come up the canal on the left

 All too soon it was Thursday and time for home, but not before we quickly visited Sacré Coeur. As we have been here before we just enjoyed a coffee at a café right opposite tis imposing church. Of course having taken so many selfies this holiday we couldn't leave with one last photo!

Who said romance was dead

Eurostar brought us safely back to London and Virgin Trains home after an amazing 6 days visiting both capital cities. There are more Paris photos in my Paris Flickr Album.

We had an amazing holiday, a definite celebration with thanks to all the companies involved. I just want to say a HUGE thank you to my darling Hubby, not only for this amazing trip but for everything over the last 25 years - I love you x x

24th June 1989

Thank you for visiting and reading my blog - please leave a comment as this will add tour memories of this special time.

We are also using the occasion to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer as we sadly lost Nick's Dad to this just 8 months after our wedding https://www.justgiving.com/NickClareHearnden25th/ thank you

Wine Challenge - another 20 bottles

Easter Saturday was the second round in our Scout 100 Wine Tasting Challenge - if your new to my blog have a look at my original post about our 100th Birthday

So after a very successful first round I was shopping again for 20 more wines but this time from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. My budget is £4.50 a bottle but with careful budgeting, a keen eye when out shopping and some very generous donations I think we hit the mark.

First HUGE thank you to our donators for this round:

Calais Wine Superstore - who very kindly donated a case of The Paddock - this was one of our tastings (reviews later) and because we only use one bottle per tasting the remaining bottles will be used as raffle prizes throughout the year. Thank you for such a generous donation.

Julie and Paul - a fantastic donation of The Opportunist, thank you for your support.

Sarah and Ian - a generous donation of Rawnsley Estate Chardonnay, thank you.

Tesco store in Bedworth - who kindly donated a case of mixed wines, some will be in our next tasting but Noblio was a perfect New Zealand addition for this round. Tesco also donated a Gallo Five Oaks and 20cl Freixenet Cava for our raffle, thank you so much.

Sainsburys store in Nuneaton - a brilliant gift card donation for our raffle, thank you.

Everyone has been so generous and I already have many donations for our next tasting in July featuring European wines and some special wines for our final tasting in November.

This will be a very special tasting with sparkling wines - Freixenet have already donated a full bottle of their Cordon Nero for this event. Friends have donated higher value wines too which we will be saving for our final tasting; these include a Chateauneuf de Pape, Pouilly Fume, and Villa Cafaggio.

And so to Round 2.......

Round 2 - ready to go

White wines

Australian Sparkling Brut (Co-op): great value sparkling wine, light and refreshing

Yellow Tails - pinot grigio (Co-op) : a bargain find at £3.00, full of green apples, citrus and passion fruit, quite a popular one

Heritage Road - chardonnay (Sainsburys) : deep yellow chardonnay with a nose of apricots

Rawnsley Estate - chardonnay (Sarah and Ian's donation) : another good example of an Australian chardonnay, quite a favourite with some of the ladies.

St Hallett - reisling (Co-op) : this Barossa wine caused some hilarity as the nose produced the recognisable riesling fragrance of petrol

The Opportunist - sauvignon blanc, Riesling (Julie and Ian's donation) : a good quality wine with the Riesling giving an added flavour to this Australian sauvignon blanc

Noblio - sauvignon blanc (donated by Tesco) : this grape was a favourite at the first tasting and it remained the favourite this time, a few tasters recognised the grape from last time.

Vineyards World of Wines - chenin blanc (Tesco) : although we have 20 cheeses at each tasting I have not been pairing them to the wines, however for this final white I did ask everyone to have a taste before having a piece of gruyere cheese and then a second taste. Everyone commented that the cheese lifted the wine - this was a discovery we made at a Tesco Wine Fair many years ago: South African chenin blanc is a prefect match for Swiss gruyere cheese.

The wine cheese pairing led very nicely into our buffet break. After tasting all 8 whites everyone compared notes to find the most popular. It was the New Zealand sauvignon blanc Noblio - my favourite too. And so to our cheeses - it's quite tricky to find 20 new cheeses each time (again to a very tight budget) and some cheese types were the same as last time but from a different store - a bit like the same grape from different producers !!

Our cheese buffet wrapped and waiting
but soon devoured

Our cheeses this time were:

Hochland curd cheese slices with onion and chives

Adsa Gruyere

Philadelphia soft cheese with salmon and dill

Farmfoods mild Cheddar slices

Tesco Cornish brie

Tesco Gorgonzola

Seriously strong speadable

Philadelphia soft cheese with sweet chilli

Farmfoods Edam slices

Asda Cheddar with pickled onions and chives

Tesco Red Leicester

Tesco Blue Stilton

Farmfoods mature Cheddar slices

Tesco medium Cheddar

Tesco Edam

Asda French chilli roulé

Tesco Wensleydale with cranberries

Tesco mini Brie

Tesco smoke flavoured cheese

Tesco Camembert





There is nothing nicer than a plate of cheese and a glass of wine - everyone had a small glass of their favourite white and plenty of biscuits to hep the cheese along - so moreish !

Moving back to wine tasting it was our 4 Rosé wines - the first from South Africa and the other three from Australia. It was interesting to compare these to the Californian rosé wines we had last time.

Rosé Wines 

South African Rosé - blend (Co-op) : a reasonable wine but probably better chilled.

kooliburra - blend (Aldi) : this was quite a favourite with the ladies, especially at just £3.99 a bottle

Jacaranda Hill - shiraz (Co-op) : most people found this a little sharp and dry

Oxford Landing Estates - blend (Co-op) : I honestly can't remember what people said for this one, I should take notes but pouring, talking and trying not to have too many sips myself is a hard enough juggle without adding a pen to the equation.

Raffle time next - as I mentioned before we had a lovely bottle of Gallo Five Oaks and the mini Cava for Tesco, the £10 gift card from Sainsbury's and as it was Easter I added a Mini Eggs mug with a packet of Mini Eggs. Great excitement and all prizes were won - although it's never me.

The final 8 were our red selection. I tried this time to have the same grape from different countries or producers.  One of each pair was from Lidl's reasonably priced range Cimarosa.

Red Wines

Singata - pinotage (this was from our own cellar and probably purchased in France) : a new grape for many of the tasters, quite mixed opinions.

Cimarosa - shiraz (Lidl) : the first chance of the evening to try a shiraz wine as a single grape. At 14.5% it was certainly a weighty wine.

Cimarosa - shiraz, cabernet sauvignon (Lidl) : A smooth red from South Africa, definitely lighter than the single shiraz.

Hardy's - shiraz, cabernet sauvignon (Co-op) : a known wine to many at the tasting and at the time the favourite.

Cimarosa - cabernet sauvignon (Lidl) : this quickly knocked the Hardy's off being the favourite, a lovely wine from Australia

Robertson Winery - cabernet sauvignon (another from our cellar and purchased at Majestic in France) - and with the speed of lightening became the favourite - much smoother and deeper - the star of the single cabernet sauvignon pair.

Masterpeace - shiraz (Aldi) : slightly over my budget at £4.99 but a spicy deep red shiraz wine. There were a few 'mmmmm's happening as this was being tasted.

The Paddock - shiraz (donated by Calais Wine) : the star of the reds. It was mainly the chaps that liked the red wines, each red was proclaimed the favourite only to be overtaken by the next, finalising in this being unquestionable voted the overall best. There were quite a few 'yes please' for second tastings of this Australian wine filled with plums, red berries, vanilla and a hint of spice, and many requests for details on how to get to Calais - details in my Calais page

The star of the evening

Thank you so much to everyone who helped with donations and a big thank you to my Hubby Nick who did another amazing job of being my 'odd' wine waiter. Thanks too to our daughter Philippa who was home from Uni and also came up to help.

Our next tasting is July 12th and will feature wine from Europe but not France as this will be our fourth tasting in September. I already have quite a few bottles ready, donations from Tesco and friends Alan & Beverley. I need to have a review of my storage boxes under the stairs before buying any - I know for certain there is a Mateus Rosé.

It is great fun finding these' bargains', writing up the tasting notes (blind) and

 presenting the wines - I hope you've enjoyed reading about Round 2 of our

100 Wine Tasting Challenge .....cheers !!

 

An amazing weekend in Oxford

As my regular blog readers know I love organising events and holidays - recently for Aimetu's Stitching which was great fun.

Anyway I have been a member of Tesco Wine Community for a few years, a great place to chat with fellow wine lovers and Tesco offer many tasting opportunities which have helped improve my wine knowledge. We have visited 7 or 8 of their annual Wine Fairs but have never managed to meet the other members so I decided to offer to arrange a 'meet up'.

I emailed various hotels, who whilst offering great room rates for staying over and had wonderful meeting rooms, quoted prices as high as £25 corkage a bottle for us to try our wines !! Thankfully Jackie, another TWC member, is a PhD student at Oxford University and arranged a meeting room for the afternoon and guest rooms for our stay - it was a really lovely venue.

The plan for the day was to meet everyone, follow Jackie on a short tour of Oxford grabbing a tum lining lunch, share and discuss wines we had each brought along, Chinese meal and bed !! All was planned and we were ready to go.

However I was then amazed to receive an email from Trivento Wines offering us a tasting of some wines from their range, along with their Cono Sur, Bonterra and Casillo del Diablo partner wines. An amazing offer which I gratefully accepted.

So after excitedly greeting the other TWC members, the planned tour of Oxford with lunch (more later), Jackie showing us to our rooms and the wonderful meeting room, we didn't have long before Ben from Trivento arrived accompanied by these lovelies:

Trivento selection

But before expanding on these I must add a few notes: wine needs cheese and nibbles so I also brought along biscuits, cheese, pate, walnuts and 'replacement' antipasti. It was replacement because I had bought a lovely platter from Lidl's new range - not far from leaving home, just as we hit the main country road out of town, Hubby casually asked 'did you put anything on the roof' - the antipasti platter - last seen flying off down the road behind us !!

Dave and Agnes 'safely' bought along some Spanish meats and cheese, and Ed, Clive and Julie brought some goodies too - making quite a platter.

Oh can you spot the 'large' bottle of Lanson? Helen McGinn author of The Knackered Mother's Wine Club had met Steve and Steph at a previous event and kindly sent on this lovely bottle of bubbly to get us going - it certainly met the challenge.

Lanson White Label - gift from Helen McGinn

So back to Ben and his lovely range of wine; 3 whites and 3 reds. They were lovely and it was such fun sitting together to sample them, comparing colours, noses and tastes. I have unfortunately mislaid my tasting notes - good excuse to try them again - so the notes are from memory, just hope I've not mixed any up, pinot noir is a white wine isn't it?

Casillero del Diablo Devil's Collection Reserva - this was a new wine to me, Casillero del Diablo but with a striking new label 

Cono Sur 20 Barrels sauvignon blanc it was so interesting to learn how the brand got it's original name - 20 barrels left so the vintner made a new wine. Being a sauvignon blanc fan this was my favourite.

Bonterra chardonnay - I can't remember it really, maybe I was refilling the water karafes in the kitchen :)

Cono Sur Bicicleta pinot noir a light red in colour - plenty of notes on their link

Trivento Malbec Reserve a crimson colour which looked like velvet in the glass, lots of blackberries with a hint of spice and vanilla

Trivento Malbec Grand Reserve this was everyone's favourite, deep red in colour, dark fruits and a lovely warm smooth finish.

From the left: Hubby Nick, Clive, Julie, Steph, Steve,
Jackie, Dave, Agnes (hiding), Ed and of course Ben

Jackie has kindly forwarded his notes which I have added as a separate page - Trivento at Oxford.

We spent a lovely hour chatting away - a great group. To thank Ben (and Jackie for the venue) I had put together a little goody bag each - Hobgoblin beer and chocolate. It was quite difficult to think of a gift for a man but not give wine - you'll see why Hobgoblin later.

So now to our wine and all those nibbles. I have to confess here that I cannot remember everyone's wine, hopefully we will be emailing each other as it would be great to find them again to enjoy at home.

We took it in turns to present our choices - Jackie is a member of the Oxford Wine Society and has learnt quite a lot in his time at the University, he presented these two lovely wines from his cellar.

German Riesling

Pinot Noir 

These two wines were lovely, however quite a surprise. I'm not a Riesling fan, either Old World or New World but this German wine was so smooth. The other wine was a surprisingly dark coloured pinot noir, full of flavour and body.

I'm not even sure who went next but Dave bought two Spanish wines - one actually from Spain. I was very pleased he had as my main experience of Spanish wine is rioja which is not always to my liking. I enjoyed both these Spanish bottles and will now maybe start to look at others.

A Spanish one from Dave and Agnes

Reds on the table - the whites were resting in the fridge

A beautiful white from Clive and Julie - it was a 2005
that he'd laid down

Loire Valley white and red brought over
from our holidays in France

I didn't get photos of Steve and Steph's wines or Ed's but all the wines sampled were very, very good - we counted up and overall there were 19 bottles which for just 10 people made a 'nice' ratio hic hic

It was a brilliant afternoon of sampling, eating, chatting, laughing - as you can see from the nibbles after shot.

Yum Yum

A few days before the event Tesco sent on a case of their wine for us too. Unfortunately with Trivento visiting and all our own wine already chosen it was just impossible to include these in our tastings - so we divided the case up and had a couple of bottles each to take home and enjoy. The case was the Finest Party Case Mixed Dozen which contains three bottles of each 4 wines. Resting in our cellar is now a Reserva Especial Sauvignon Blanc from Chile, and a Mundulla Shiraz from Australia. It was a nice gift to take home, thanks to Tesco Wine Community.

My Tesco wines to enjoy at home

Back tracking to our visit into Oxford - we had time for a quick stroll round looking at the beautiful Cotswold buildings before enjoying a lunch. It's a beautiful place.

Small windows with intricate carving

A massive outside wall of identical panels

The most important church in Oxford - if you
live more than 3 miles from here you cannot
study at the University

On our tour

Old square church tower, intricate clock and bells
with a hexagonal building next door
Oxford has some amazing architecture

Wolfson College, where we stayed, is on the banks of the River Cherwell and our meeting room had glorious views of the river watching punters go up and down. There was plenty of wildlife too with a pair of nesting swans and some Canadian geese. Hubby and I enjoyed a coffee sitting on the college patio on Sunday morning before meeting up again to say our goodbyes. A beautiful setting complimented by gorgeous wines shared in really great company - cheers !

Beautiful view

Everyone (just) survived our very 'full' Saturday and Sunday morning we went our separate ways; Jackie to work, Ed, Steph and Steve set off home; Dave and Agnes went back into Oxford for the day; and Clive, Julie, Hubby and I moved over to Witney, just 20 minutes down the road - another beautiful Cotswold town. The main reason for our visit was Wychwood Brewery - home of Hobgoblin beer (remember the goody bags)

Witney market place

Witney church and cross

Cotswold high street

After a lovely lunch at Café Rouge arrived at Wychwood for their afternoon tour. Hubby and I have been before but it was Clive and Julie's first tour of a brewery. The Tap is a small bar room on the ground floor where we were greeted and offered a half pint of Hobgoblin or other Wychwood beer. A 45 minute very informative tour followed, including tasting the barley at various levels of roasting, and although as I said we've been before (and to other breweries) there is always more to learn. The smell as you go around is amazing. It's quite a small brewery still brewed in the traditional way with many of the original vats and equipment.

After the tour we returned to The Tap to sample their range - well not quite all the range but at least 6. As I was driving Hubby had double samplings - no complaints though ! My favourite in their range is Black Wych a lovely stout and Ginger Beard. They also produce Brakspear beer and we all enjoyed a sample of their Triple III.



Behind the bar - me, Hubby, Julie and Clive

Hubby and I also popped into the Majestic in Witney - we don't have one near us. It was very similar to the store at Calais with a great range. We did bring a case home but made up of three wines of our choice -

Paul Mas Marsanne, The Ned Sauvignon Blanc and Paul Mas Syrah-Viognier

An absolutely amazing weekend, everyone played a part in making it such fun to meet for the first time (although after five minutes you'd have thought we were long lost friends)

One to be repeated I'm sure - thank you everyone x x http://www.bonterra.com/