Drinking around the world: The Scots-Armenian wine alliance April 22, 2021 The Scottish Borders are famous for Sir Walter Scott’s old home Abbotsford House, Jedburgh snails and Hawick Balls boiled sweets, as well as being the birthplace of the “voice of rugby” Bill Maclaren. Somehow, it has also become the hub of Armenian wine appreciation and the UK’s centre of south Caucasus viniculture. “I knew Armenia made [...]
TOAD whisky is a disruptive, Oxford-made spirit April 21, 2021 Can you have a disruptive whisky? Is there such a thing as a daredevil distiller? One that breaks boundaries despite taking years to mature, somehow predicting the status quo and refusing to follow it? I present to you TOAD whisky and its Portuguese Master Distiller, Oxford-based Chico Rosa. “Our whisky perfectly showcases our terroir,” he boasts. [...]
Wine list advice: You’re the boss and the sommelier is your friend April 21, 2021 Restaurants are finally opening up again – you’re going to eat a meal that you didn’t cook! Time to dust off and squeeze into your old favourite threads. After working in some of London’s best restaurants for the last 15 years I’ve got some top tips on how to get the most out of your [...]
Vast Italian market Eataly set to open in the heart of the City April 20, 2021 The Square Mile will soon be home to vast Italian market Eataly, which has already seen success in cities including New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago. Broadgate Market, London’s largest pedestrianised neighbourhood, will host the 42,000 sq ft venture, which will include take-away, retail, and terrace dining. Eataly is slated to open on 29 [...]
Ramsbury Estate beats Russia and the US to win top vodka prize April 20, 2021 North-east Wiltshire had just been crowned the UK’s vodka capital, and one of the best vodka-making regions in the world. Ramsbury Estate, at Aldbourne near Marlborough, won Spirit of the Year, Vodka Of the Year and a gold medal at last week’s prestigious London Spirits Competition. “It was international recognition for our cosmopolitan team,” says [...]
Drinking around the world: Romanian wines to die for April 20, 2021 My introduction to Romanian wine was inauspicious. It came in one of Count Dracula’s tourist castle hotels in Transylvania. We sat around a coffin-shaped table as a black-suited waiter approached and smiled, revealing not particularly threatening canines. As he brandished the wine list he said, “May I have the pleasure of providing sir with a [...]
Drinking around the world: The joys of Brazilian wine April 16, 2021 You don’t have to go all the way to Copacabana Beach to taste Brazilian wine – Ipswich will do. Nicolas Corfe founded Go Brazil Wines in 2010, with the Suffolk-based company still the UK’s only specialist importer of Brazilian wines cachaca. “We source directly from mainly smaller producers, seeking out unusual and well-differentiated wines that [...]
Croatian wine is shedding its rep as cheap plonk – here’s why April 15, 2021 Croatia has an ideal climate for wine making, but lacks the reputation as a solid producer of premium bottles. For years its exports would feature in the bottom echelons of wine lists, labeled – mostly fairly – as cheap and cheerful plonk. But not any more. The UK’s first Croatian wine importer is run by [...]
Shaken, stirred or dirty: the lore and lure of the martini April 15, 2021 The martini was not the first cocktail—we don’t know what was, but likely some unappetising collision of spirit, sugar, water and bitters, more than two hundred years ago—but it has become iconic, almost metonymic. When we think of a cocktail glass, it is the v-shaped modernist twist on the coupe which we imagine. And we [...]
The best of wine tourism within day-trip distance of London April 15, 2021 The warm sun on my back, I sip a delicious glass of wine looking across a sweeping vista of vines with the rolling green countryside stretched out before me towards – yes, could that possibly be? – the distant sparkle of the sea and a blue-sky horizon. Have I thrown lockdown travel precautions to the [...]