The Spanglish Edition
Hello to members old and new!
Another month rolls around which means another, delicious box of wine, cheese and charcuterie.
This month, we are mixing things up slightly and celebrating some of the finest products from our own back yard, the UK & our close friends in Spain.
Whack the playlist on with the button below and let’s get going.
Wine Tasting
How to taste wine
The first step of assessing wine is looking at it
Wine snobs like to talk about the legs of wine. In all honestly, this is a bit of a waste of time.
The wine legs (or tears of the wine as the French refer to them) can give an indication of the alcoholic content of the wine. But it’s so difficult to be accurate with a reading from legs,
So we say just read the label!
For appearance, we only ever find it useful to note something if the colour is completely out of the ordinary i.e. it’s a really dark rose
The next step is to smell your wine.
Swirl the wine in the glass. Looks poncy but does release some aromas, and helps it not just smell like alcohol.
Broadly, smells can be broken into three categories.
Primary Aromas: grape-derivative and include fruits,
herbs, and floral notes.
Secondary Aromas: from winemaking practices and easiest to find in white wine. Examples include beer, cheese rind, or nuts.
Tertiary Aromas: from aging in bottle or oak. Normally savoury. Examples include roasted nuts, spices, vanilla, autumn leaves, tobacco, and leather.
Start broad. Is it fruity?
Red wine? Think of red, blue, and black fruits.
White wine? Think of citrus, orchard, or tropical fruits.
Once you’ve identified a scent such as citrus, you can now think if it’s more apple than lemon or more orange than lime.
This is all pretty personal to your own nose.
The same principle can be applied to floral and herb scents, but in our opinion, not many people can tell you the specific scent of geranium.
If you can detect herbs or floral notes, it’s a great start.
Wine Tasting
How To Taste Wine
Finally you get to actually taste the wine. Funnily enough though, tasting is predominantly to detect the structure of the wine.
Body: Think how differently skimmed milk, full-fat milk and cream coat the mouth.
Acidic: How much does it make your mouth drool?
Tannin: An annoying word but an easy one to detect. Imagine sucking on a teabag and how dry it would leave your mouth.
That’s tannin.
Dry or sweet? Tannin can trick you to think there’s no sweetness in a wine. Stick the tip of your tongue in as the best detector of sugar (probably not the done thing to do in a restaurant).
The final part of tasting a wine, is to come to a conclusion about it.
What type of wine did you just have and did you like it?
Was it too acidic or just a bit meh?
If you’ve just tried, for example, a Barolo, log that experience with that wine in your mind so that the next time you have a Barolo, you have a foundation of knowledge to judge it against.
The only way to really educate yourself is to drink more. Poor us.
Wine
Masusta Garnacha
Name: Masusta Garnacha
ABV: 14.8%
Grape: Garnacha
Country and Region: Spain, Navarra
Winemaking: Vegan, Organic, Minimal Intervention
Tasting notes of Red Berries, Oak & Spice.
A juicy red-fruit mix of cherries and raspberries, it is fresh on the palate, with a nice earthy lick of oak, pepper and spice. Full of flavour, but not too heavy.
Sweetness (dry to sweet) 1-5: 3
Acidity (low to high) 1-5: 2
Tannin (low to high) 1-5: 3
Body (light to full) 1-5: 3
Producer
LMT Wines
Luis Moya Tortosa is an agricultural engineer and oenologist.
In 2012, and after picking up more wine qualifications than you can shake a stick at, Luis decided to go it alone with a unique business model.
‘LMT Wines’ would not be a single estate winery making wines from one plot. Instead, knowing where the best sites were, he would use his contacts to pick up these amazing parcels knowing so much more could be made of them with the right care and attention.
He calls it a nomad approach, where he has no physical premises but instead rents winemaking space in existing wineries. This allows a huge degree of flexibility and potential to develop his portfolio as he seeks out new and amazing plots across Northern Spain.
Cheese 1
Montgomery Cheddar
Age: 18 Months
Country + Region: UK, Somerset
Milk Type: Cow
Pasteurised: No
Strength Of Cheese: 3
Style Of Cheese: Hard
Texture: 4
This smoked cheese has a dense, slightly dry texture. A gently smoked aroma gives way to a light sweetness balanced by the fresh acidity of the wine. The finish is clean and elegant.
Montgomery’s Cheddar has since 1911 been made at Manor Farm, where the milk from the 200-strong herd of Friesian cows that roam the 1,200-acre farm is used exclusively for making the cheese, considered by many to provide the benchmark for Somerset Cheddar. The careful, measured approach to modernisation pioneered by Jamie Montgomery means engaging only those advances that will improve the make without compromising on the processes that define the cheese.
Cheese 2
Waterloo
Age: 45 Days Minimum
Country + Region: UK, Berkshire
Milk Type: Cow
Pasteurised: No
Strength Of Cheese: 3
Style Of Cheese: Semi-Soft
Texture: 3
The Waterloo cheese is soft, fresh and incredibly buttery with a distinctive yellow colour. A fresh cheese with a fresh wine, elevating each other’s flavours brilliantly. The buttery flavours of the cheese with the fresh red fruits from the wine are a match for sure.
Village Maid Cheese was started by Anne Wigmore in 1986 after she had been working for the National Institute for Research in Dairying in Shinfield for 10 years, initially in the microbiological department, and then learning her craft of cheesemaking in their research dairy. Today their brilliant team continue to produce artisan cheeses that are recognised as some of the best in Britain.
Cheese 3
Cricket St Thomas Capricon Goats
Age: 15-20 Days
Country + Region: UK, Somerset
Milk Type: Goats
Pasteurised: Yes
Strength Of Cheese: 3
Style Of Cheese:
Soft Mould Ripened Cheese
Texture: 2
This cheese is soft and creamy with a slightly nutty taste. As it ripens the centre will become runny and stronger in taste, although never too ‘goaty’. Creamy cheese and fruity wine? Perfect.
Made in Somerset, Cricket St Thomas Goats cheese is a multi-award British cheese, made from milk collected from local farms, surrounded by lush dairy pastures. Cricket St Thomas have 35 years of experience in soft mould cheese.
Charcuterie
The Deli Society Chorizo Ibérico Vela
The Deli Society partners with artisan producers that put animal welfare first.
Country & Region: Spain, Olivenza
This chorizo comes from the famous and iconic Ibérico pigs. These pigs are certified free-range and roam free across the Olivenza region in Spain. The pigs forage and gorge on acorns, which creates a subtle nutty flavour in the meat.
The Iberian meat is cured using an all-natural process which guarantees a product free of additives. This means unbelievable pieces of meat made with natural ingredients to preserve and enhance the unique flavour that characterizes the sausage, all from our partner’s free-range Iberian pigs, produced the traditional way. The result is a truly Intense aroma, unique flavour and a smooth texture.