Our friend Emmanuel, from Vintage Roots (the organic wine people) will be at Staverton on December 9th and Yealmpton on December 10th for a Christmas wine tasting.
As well as a few chunky, winter reds, he’ll be focusing on white Viognier. For those of you who, unlike me, aren’t wine anoraks, Viognier hales from the Northern Rhone. It’s been lauded as the next big thing for a couple of decades and planted all over the world. The problem was that nobody seemed to know how to vinify it and many of the resulting wines were pretty poor. Now that’s changed and there is some fantastic Viognier, particularly organic, appearing from all over the place. We have samples from Chile, Sicily, the Luberon and Southern Rhone. Apricots and peaches, combined with a creamy, slightly oily, mouthfeel are Viognier’s principal characteristics but, more importantly, it’s a fantastic partner for virtually all cheeses. I might stick to the Port or red for the Stilton but for anything Alpine (Comte, Beaufort etc), mature or cured (Parmesan or Manchego), stinky or rind or curd washed (Edam, Gouda, Tallegio, Gruyére, Epoisses etc) Viognier can’t be beat.
Hopefully Country Cheeses will be there so we can get pretty serious about the pairings. I know cheese and wine sounds like a bit of a cliché but so what? As usual we’ll have lots of other tasters and offers and as with previous years, our butchers will be on hand to help with your Christmas meat orders. So put the dates in your diary. And bring along this voucher to enter a raffle for a magnum of Bousquet Malbec.
Staverton on December 9th and Yealmpton on December 10th