It’s ok ladies and gents, you can open your eyes again, you’ve made it to Friday!!! I think like most of the Northern Hemisphere we’ve had a week over here in the UK of woolen socks and turning up radiators, so I think we all deserve a wine dinner, don’t we?
For me this weekend I’m lucky enough to be trying wine from the UK’s very own New Forest. My sister and her fella picked up a couple of bottles on the way home from one of those romantic weekends away that little brothers don’t really want to hear about!
UK wine, for so long, has been based around sparkling wine. We not too far off the same distance from the equator as the region of Champagne, so UK wine makers have made great inroads (and won a shed load of awards) for their traditional method bubbles.
What vineyards here are doing now is working out what else they can grow. Ok, so the weather’s not ideal, but there is a solution. They use a mix of normal grapes and hybrids of normal grape varieties that, although banned from being sold as wine in Europe due to an EU directive, grow much better in the UK climate, and can still produce fantastic wines.
So we’re trying Setley Ridge’s dry white and red wines. The dry white is from the Bacchus grape (normal wine grape) and the red is from the Rondo grape (hybrid wine grape).
We’re going to try all this with a pairing of courgette risotto for the Bacchus, and roast venison for the Rondo. Will let you know how it goes!
Have top weekends all!
Cheers
Mike
Photo: Setley Ridge
