Easter wine tasting

 Easter Saturday was our latest wine tasting with our friends at our scout group. We have recently secured grants for new windows and new flooring thanks to our local council and The King's Trust repainted our hall over the February half term so the building is starting to look amazing. We still have work to do, in particular we are needing to refurbish our toilets so we can include accessible facilities, so we are looking at grant funding for this.

Anyhow the room looked lovely all set up for our wine tasting, with a mini quiz and an Easter treat for all.

We began our evening trying something new, last tasting we tried vermouth this time La Gitana sherry was our new tasting. It isn't something I like and I didn't know if the others would but as Tesco had it on clearance at under £3.00 it seemed too good an option to miss. Unfortunately it wasn't well liked but I guess it probably tastes amazing out in Spain on a very hot day served very cold. 

Our tastings were in twos as not everyone likes white and not everyone likes red so tasting in pairs gives everyone a choice of wine when we pause mid tasting for our buffet.  Our first wines were The Traitor from Majestic, yes it was the label that caught my eye. 

The Traitor white was 100% Sauvignon Blanc and the red 40% Carmenere 40% Syrah and 20% Malbec. Both wines were from the Central Valley in Chile and were produced by Vina Casa Solis one of the big Spanish wine producers who also make the Guv'nor wine. The company invested 45 million euro in buying new sites in Chile and sourcing vines from the various Chilean regions. The name Traitor is from the legend of a young woman named Ananuca. She died from a broken heart after being betrayed by a miner and his quest for treasure. The day after her burial the valley was covered in vibrant red flowers and so were given her name and feature on the label of these lovely wines.

As soon as I looked into researching these wines I knew we had visited them in Chateauneuf du Pape. Leon Perdigal was the first wine maker of Ogier, one of France's top producers of Cote du Rhone wine. 

At previous tasting we have enjoyed this red and the white but we have not tasted the rosé until now. Both wines are made with  Syrah and Grenache grapes but the rosé also has Cinsault and the red Mourvedre. As expected these wines were very well received, we do all seem to enjoy this style of French wine. 

After our buffet we moved on to two wines from Aldi, both in the Unearthed range, a selection of wine Aldi have sourced from little known vineyards. Unearthed Beira Interior is a white wine mage from Roupeiro, Fontae Cal, Malvasia and Arinto grapes in Portugal in the Beira region at high altitude. Again it wasn't until I was researching the wine that I discovered it had featured on Saturday Kitchen recommended by Olly Smith. 

Our Unearthed red was from a region of Southern France I know very well as we have holidayed there many times including last year in the area of this appellation Minervois. Montagnes du Paradis is a blend of Carignan, Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre and Cinsault and is made for Aldi by Chassaux et Fils. It was probably my favourite of the evening as it certainly brought back memories of warm sunny days last June in France.

We stayed in France for our final pair, Beau-Rivage Bordeaux Blanc and Bordeaux Rouge. Their name means beautiful shore and these wines are produced near the banks of the Gironde river on a terroir of gravel and silt. Produced by a family owned winemaker since 1870 these wines are produced exclusively for Majestic.

Bordeaux Blanc was predominately Sauvignon Blanc with the addition of Semillon giving it a rounded flavour with floral highlights. Bordeaux Rouge has an abundance of red fruits coming from its two grapes, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Our final wine did not have a pair, we wanted to enjoy it on its own. Fabula de Panzia Carinena is a Spanish wine from Lidl made from Carignan. It is made by a 60 year old Bodega with over 3000 hectares of vines in the village of Carinena. This wine maker has six different labels all of which have their own fable. The fable on our bottle was 'And for being so honest and sincere, she received the name of her land'.

We had a super evening as always, discovering new wines and flavours and perhaps understanding more about which wines we prefer and where they are from. It is always fun, if hardwork, to host these events and I'm already thinking about which wines to try next. 

Sous la Manche pour les vins

It's been a while since we did a trip to Calais, and I've missed it. We've never been in January and as I'm not the world's best sailor we decided to travel 'sous la Manche' using Eurotunnel, again something we haven't done for a few years.

Up early Friday morning we had a good journey to London to meet our friends who were joining us for the weekend. Our continued journey south on the M25 to Folkestone passed surprisingly quickly and trouble free, unusual most days never mind a Friday rush hour. In fact everywhere was quiet, we had no delay checking in, we were allocated an earlier crossing and we've never seen the car park/loading lanes so empty.

The weather Friday was actually quite good, cold but dry with little breeze, we could have smoothly sailed across in bright winter sunshine. As it was we had a quick trip on Le Shuttle and arrived just after lunch in sunny Calais.

Our weekend plans were a mix of wine shopping and sightseeing. Our first stop Auchan my favourite supermarket. However it's not good to shop on an empty stomach so our actual first stop was at the local bar for a croque monsieur and coffee, delicious.

Shopping time; my french supermarket list always includes Le Petit Marseillais soap refills, Café du Maison coffee, and Rince Couchon beer. Of course there's our favoruite wines too.

My two favourite sauvignon blanc wines from Auchan 

A great red we shared in the hotel

This square shaped bottle caught my eye.

The square bottled Pure Loire was perfect - not only a lovely crisp citrusy sauvignon blanc but the perfect shape to lie on the outside window sill at the hotel to chill whilst we went out for dinner - a very good reason to have white wine in a square bottle ! 

Dinner was a first for our friends but an old favourite for us - Flunch. It's a self service restaurant - you chose your meat/fish which is cooked to order and then help yourself to a large variety of vegetables, chips, potatoes, rice or pasta. Lovely food, great value and they serve our favourite Cellier des Dauphins wine.  

Saturday morning and we set off north for a little sightseeing. Our first stop was Dunkerque, another port which we have sailed to in the past. It was a very cold day but we did have a short stroll around before a warm up and rest in a small typical french tabac/bar. We ordered coffee and croissants which to our delight arrived piping hot as they had been cooked just for us. 

An old church tower that is now the Tourist
Office - you can climb to the top.

Dunkerque's Town Hall

Dunkerque Harbour - beautiful clear blue skies but so so cold.

Our next stop was a village I'd seen on the map, it caught my eye as it had a star shaped waterway around it. Gravelines is in fact an old fort town and the waterway a defence. In the summer you can hire boats and sail around them, it was a lovely place which I'm sure we'll be visiting again along with Grand and Petit Fort Philippe, the two villages on the banks of the long harbour inlet. 

The intriguing waterways on the map

The steep sides of the fort with the moat below

One of the gateways into Gravelines

Beautiful but cold day

 After a lovely picnic looking out to see and watching the DFDS ferry pass by we were ready for our serious wine shopping ..... don't worry it was a picnic in the car, far too cold to picnic outside.

Our first stop was at Calais Wine - a wine store we have been visiting for many many years, in it's original shop in Coquelles when it was known as Oddbins. They now have a lovely new tasting room with three machine servicing measured samples of red, white and rose wines. Unfortunately the heating was not working so the store was as cold inside as out and all the wines were served chilled.

We were not bulk buying this trip - partly because of space with being four in a car plus luggage already but also because for us it was as much about being back in Calais as bringing many items home - saying that we did fill the boot between us.

Four great whites from Calais Wines

Two Spanish reds from Calais Wines

Our second wine store was Majestic, we are big fans of this wine merchant visiting their Leicester store quite often and having enjoyed many wine courses/tasting with them. It was lovely to wander around looking at familiar labels at a lower price than home. We mainly brought home our favourites with a couple of new ones to try.

Majestic reds including Cote Mas, a new one to try.

Majestic whites - interesting Vinho Verde bottle

We did also pop into Lidl, as with here at home Lidl and Aldi offer a cheaper range and we did find a few bargains in store including a Jean-Claude Mas Viognier.

Lidl reds

Lidl white - Graves and Viognier

Saturday night was a french treat - mussels in Roquefort sauce, pure delight. We had a great night out at The Black Bull Pub in the Cite de Europe centre. A supposedly English pub serving great french food and beer - you could get English beer too. If on holiday a dessert is a must but which one? In the end we had a Cafe Gourmand which comprises of three or four mini puddings and a small espresso coffee. We decided the caramel set custard with caramel crumb topping was definitely a 'naughty' pudding.

Our stay at the Ibis Tunnel sous la Manche was perfect; clean rooms, comfy bed and great location for dining out. It was so nice to be able to enjoy Calais and it's surrounding area again. Unfortunately Sunday morning we had to travel home, another quick crossing on Le Shuttle soon had us back in misty England.

It really was a good weekend trip away, one we'll be repeating for sure and one we can remember each time we uncork one of our holiday wines - cheers !