Chilling Out

23-Dec-11 - I've been to Rioja four times this year and have been reminded about the way cafés and bars serve the house red - typically a joven but occasionally crianza. It's quite normal for the wine to be kept in the fridge and served chilled, and delicious it is, too. I had thought that chilling for red wines was only suitable for young wines or those with little tannin (lower temperatures tend to coagulate the tannins and overshadow the fruit). I was also reminded that my mother told me when I was in my teens: she preferred red wine chilled, which I thought at the time was rather odd.

At The Eversley we keep wines for immediate consumption in the 'outhouse' as we call it (actually a utility room), which has no heating, and as the colder weather started to gather this past autumn I would habitually take a bottle out in the morning and put it on the kitchen table to warm up to room temperature. On one occasion I forgot to do this, and so opened a bottle for dinner straight from the outhouse.The temperature in the kitchen is usually around 21-24ºC, and the temperature in the outhouse abut 5º cooler. To our surprise, both Jill and I actually preferred the wine at this temperature: it seemed to have a brighter fruit and a crisp freshness - and this was Rioja reserva of 2005. Since then we've tried several other wines at a similar temperature, including a 2001 Priorat, and enjoyed them all.

Perhaps it's time to rethink our attitude to what constitutes the best temperature for red wines. Everybody knows that the phrase 'room temperature' was coined at a time before central heating when rooms were rather cooler than they are now, and it's certainly been an eye-opener for us. I'm not suggesting that we should put our 2008 Barolo in the fridge (tannins probably too heavy at the moment), but part of the joy of the wine world is that there's always something new with which to experiment. Give it a try if you haven't done so already: you may be as pleasantly surprised as we were.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus

19-Dec-11 - Imagine the scene: the great guru sits in the centre of a semicircle of genuflecting acolytes and beautiful women, all worshipping silently. Suddenly, he speaks, and the assembled company cranes forward to catch every golden word as it falls from his sacred lips. He is creating, out of some ethereal or astral ectoplasm, a new perfection.

"Juniper from Tuscany and India, Cassia bark from China, Angelica from France and Iris from Florence, and cold, cold Icelandic water which has been filtered through ancient obsidian for millennia..." This continues for several pages of a lavishly-illustrated book filled with photographs of, er, well, beautiful women, and the guru himself. Eventually, we get to the most important picture: it's a bottle of gin.

I had always thought that I was the King of the Bullshitters, but I see now that I am a mere mortal in these matters. The guru is Martin Miller, he of Antiques Price Guide and Residence fame, and no expense has been spared on the opulent book, photography, grandiloquence and, apparently, the gin itself. It's made with all the botanicals listed above, and shipped off to Iceland for blending, and this creates, in the words of the guru himself "the most enchanting of gins."

My wife Jill is the gin aficionado at The Eversley, and her pecking order starts with Tanqueray, with Gordon's and Beefeater next along. She doesn't like Bombay Sapphire ("too floral") or Plymouth ("not dry enough") and shudders in horror if she even sniffs a bottle of supermarket cold-compound gin ("always look for the word 'distilled' on the label") so what would she make of this?

Pic.: www.drinkhacker.com

I tried it myself and it certainly seemed very complex, full-flavoured and aromatic with subtle floral aromas and a good 'wheaty' grain spirit base. I am, however, not a gin drinker, so I passed the tasting task over to Jill. Any good? Well, she mixed it as she always does with a slice of fresh lime and Schweppes tonic ("it really deserves Fever Tree but we haven't got any at the moment") with ice-cubes made from filtered water... And then raved about it, claiming that she could taste every individual botanical, it was perfectly dry and lingered elegantly on the palate: "probably the best gin and tonic I've had for a very long time".

I have nothing to add to that, except to say that the retail price of Martin Miller's Gin hovers around the £20 mark (+/-), according to www.wine-searcher.com. It probably would have tasted just as good without the bullshit. Just don't ask about the air-miles!