Wine Tasting and Buying

Colette’s Top Tips for September......

Wine tasting and buying

Well as the nights start to draw in and it becomes just that little bit too chilly to leave your jacket at home, you begin to realise that the seasons are changing, The beginning of autumn always comes as a bit of a surprise to me, I think it sneaks in when I’m still dreaming about holidays and balmy nights and then all of a sudden its dark at 7pm I mourn the loss of summer and am usually quite sad for a few days ,but then I remember how much I love snuggling up beside the fire with a glass of red wine when its cold wet and windy. But then the choice of red wine is always a challenge, which one should I drink??

I am so lucky with our wine supplier Boutinot wines of Manchester, not only do they have fantastic wines but they also invite me to attend Wine Tastings on a regular basis. It is really work, honest, as I have to develop a wine list for the restaurant and how can I possibly recommend them if I haven’t tried them all……………a few times each!!

So Tuesday I went to Manchester to attend the September event, this usually showcases some of the award winners and mostly the new additions to the portfolio along with some of the old favourites. I always try to go in with an open mind but I have to remember that I can’t possibly fall in love with a £60 bottle of wine as who would I ever sell it to. My aim for the day was to find a few reasonably priced white wines for the list make sure that the new vintages were as good as the last ones and the ultimate challenge a juicy mellow red wine with structure, good length, some tannins but only a hint of spice. I’m not fussy am I ??

I found quite a few that made it into my shortlist for the new wine list, surprisingly one is a Bordeaux. I always think I never know enough about French wines and Clarets in particular, so I try to steer clear but this one was young and not fully developed but so full of promise. Not very complex but so easy to drink which is never a bad thing in my book. I’m not sure if it will make the final list as our 58 Guineas Everyday Claret is very popular and I would hate to see it go as I so love the name.

However how do you know what to buy, and more importantly what should you pay? And how can you tell the difference between two wines that are seemingly identical. Let’s take two Merlots from Chile, they promise plum and damson notes, lots of juicy fruit and round tannins. So far clueless, that could mean anything as wine speak is as easy to understand as Mongolian, so do you opt for the prettier label, the one that has fewest bottles on the shelf (my sisters technique, thinking well someone else has bought them, that must mean they’re good, and strangely enough has backfired more often than not) or do you automatically reach for the cheapest as price isn’t everything and sometimes you’re just paying for a name

The most important lesson I have ever been taught about wine is to do with the pricing, not the ultimate sale price but the distribution of what your money will buy you.

Take a bottle of wine in a shop on sale for £4 and another on sale for £4.50, both have paid for the bottle tax, the label, the branding, the shipping, the staff costs and the profit for the supermarket and various other things that I probably could never dream of therefore the only variable is the actual cost of the wine in the bottle. Let’s say the cost of the wine in the £4 bottle would work out at 50p whilst the £4.50 bottle would work out at £1 therefore for just an extra 50 pence you’re actually doubling the value of the content so in most cases you will have a wine that’s of a higher quality. Just think of the difference if you paid £7 for the bottle.

However, as with everything, the great thing about wine is there is no right or wrong, just your personal opinion and taste and that’s what really matters. Next time you find a wine you like, take a note of the grape variety, the country and area of origin………….France is quite a big place, so note down the appellation and of course be bold, try some new wines if you’re worried about opening the whole bottle and not liking it then try some different wines that we sell by the glass and ask our opinion, we all like different things but you will find us unanimous in our desire to match you with a wine you will really enjoy and that complements your choice of meal.

This month we are running our usual prize draw that everyone who comes in to The Tree is free to enter. So keeping with the wine theme the winning prize for October will be a hamper of wine from Boutinot. A great chance to try a few new wines, all carefully selected for your enjoyment.CLICK HERE to find out how to enter.

Feel free to ask questions or comment below
Colette

Fab Recipe for Ragu alla Bolognese

Colette’s Top Tips for August.....

Tomatoes - See our fab recipe for Ragù alla Bolognese below 

I have become rather nostalgic lately of summer in Italy, I think its everyone’s stories of their holidays and what they did that have me remembering the good times we had at this time of year. As most of the produce is local, that means seasonal so you either eat it or find ways of preserving it.

The most memorable is the making of tomato sauce. In Italy, each family buys around 400 kg of very ripe San Marzano tomatoes to make into sauce.

They arrive on a lorry and basically just poured out on the street, where you have a lifetimes worth of buckets where they get stored overnight. 6 am and you're outside washing them and the matriarch of the family, or my mother-in-law, has a wood fire going with a giant trivet and pot of water. The tomatoes then get boiled for around 2/3 minutes to slacken the skins, and then put into colanders. My job, or usually the youngest family member, was to prick each tomato about 3 times for the water to drain away. Can you tell that being a foreigner I wasn't allowed to anything more skilled! Then they go through a type of blender which separates the pulp, the skins and the seeds. The pulp is then bottled and sealed. Some at this time get left plain; others have herbs and seasonings added. By this time it’s about 5 pm and you're aching all over. They are then placed gingerly in a drum which is filled with water and placed over a fire until boiling. The bottles are left to cool overnight and then stored for the family’s enjoyment over the course of the year. It was such a long hard day, but the enjoyment of eating fresh tomato sauce in the midst of winter made it all worth while. The next best thing is the conversations about yield, bottles, how many bottles broke etc. Keeping up with the Jones in Gamberale is just so different

Here is a lovely recipe for a pasta sauce, using Passata. Don’t worry you’re allowed to cheat and buy the Passata (tomato sauce)  from the supermarket 

  

Ragù alla Bolognese 

Makes enough for 8

• 2kg minced beef,
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 carrots, finely chopped
• 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• sprig of rosemary and sprig of sage,
• 1 bottle of red wine
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste/puree
• 1 litre tomato passata
• salt and pepper
• crushed garlic 2 tea spoons

To serve: 

• pasta, preferably pappardelle, tagliatelle or short pasta
• freshly grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

Take the meat out of the fridge and lay it on a tray and let it come to room temperature, so that it will sear, rather than ‘boil’ when it goes into the pan.

Heat the oil in a wide-bottomed saucepan, add the vegetables, herbs and the crushed garlic , and sweat over a high heat for 5—8 minutes without allowing it to colour (you will need to keep stirring).

Season the meat with salt and pepper and add to the pan of vegetables, making sure that the meat is covering the base of the pan. Leave for about 5—6 minutes, so that the meat seals underneath and heats through completely, before you start stirring (otherwise it will ooze protein and liquid and it will ‘boil’ rather than sear). Take care, though, that the vegetables don’t burn — add a little more oil, if necessary, to stop this happening.

Stir the meat and vegetables every few minutes for about 10—12 minutes, until the meat starts to stick to the bottom of the pan. At this point, you should be ready to add the wine.

Add the wine and let it reduce right down to virtually nothing, then add the tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time.

Add the passata with 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook for about 1-2 hours, adding a little extra water if necessary from time to time, until you have a thick sauce. Season to taste

When you are ready to serve the ragù, put it back into a pan and heat through. Cook your pasta (preferably pappardelle, tagliatelle or short pasta) and drain, reserving the cooking water. Add the pasta to the ragù and toss well, adding some of the cooking water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce. Serve with freshly grated Pecorino or Parmesan

Seasonal Produce

Colette's Top Tips for June....

Lately we seem to be getting inundated with advice from top chefs to eat seasonal produce. This is a great way to get maximum flavour for minimum price in terms of abundance, however how do we know what’s good to eat when shops have very conceivable type of food all year round.

This is when old wives tales really do come into their own, not that I remember very many, just the one about not eating mussels when there is no R in the month so guess what……………its June and we are not serving mussels. However we have Asparagus which is in the height of its British growing season. I personally adore it and it can be quite versatile in ways that generally are not put on menus.

One of my favourite dishes is Spaghetti Carbonara but why don’t you try making it substituting Asparagus instead of the bacon…………….delightful, even for a meat eater such as myself

Carbonara is so deliciously creamy that sometimes it becomes quite an achievement to find a wine that you can enjoy whilst eating it. I know that oaked Chardonnay’s have fallen out of favour lately but there can be only a few other wines which can accompany such a heavy dish. One of my favourites from the list is quite an unusual wine, being a Pinot Grigio from South Australia. It has a fantastic mouth filling creamy quality and is unoaked. However the label would have you believe that it’s dry and minerally……………..on which sliding scale did they measure it on.

You all know how much I love wine, I’m sure I’ve told you countless times but its all about your own tastes and preferences, however we do spend a long time trying out the wines we list (ok repeatedly) to find some lesser known jewels for you to appreciate. Next time ask a member of staff to recommend something new, you never know it might turn out to be your new favourite too