So, as you will have read, Adam and I smoked some fish last weekend. This is only half of the story, for what food tasting event is any good without a wine tasting alongside? Very few, I’ll guess.
Both of us are normally fans of red wine, but that seemed a little inappropriate to go with fish. I did bring a bottle of Caronne Ste Gemme 1998, which I recalled going very well with a cigar the last time I had it, but we didn’t get round to opening it.
As Adam mentioned, I foraged some seaweed on my way over to smoke things. What he (kindly) neglected to mention is that I also managed to a) forget to pick it up on my way back from the seaside and have to drive about four miles back the way I’d come to collect it (which in retrospect probably wasn’t worth it) and b) lock myself out of the house when I went to buy meths for the smoker and have to spend twenty minutes attempting to clamber over my back wall and convince the neighbours and two passing PCSOs that I wasn’t a tweed-clad burglar.
By the time I finally got to Adam’s house, about three hours after the time he’d suggested, I was in need of a drink. Thankfully LF, being a kind soul, had prepared an extremely strong, very cold cosmopolitan for me upon my arrival. Whilst this isn’t my usual drink, it was extremely welcome and got things off at an accelerated pace.
Anyway, enough of this storytelling, you’re here to read about booze, and that’s what you’ll hear about now.
We kicked off the tasting by pairing the Alder-smoked fish with a bottle of Fortnum and Mason Grand Cru Blanc des Blancs Champagne that was “left over from a christmas hamper”. Whilst the shipper and label of this bottle would suggest excellence, and I’m not one to turn my nose up at a generous offer of champagne, none of the party was particularly enamoured with it, one resorting to mixing it with Chambord to make a kind of Kir Royale. In my opinion it was a fairly standard young champagne, but probably not worth the price tag that the F&M label inevitably bestows upon it.
a 34 year-old bottle of beer
Following on from the F&M, was a wonderful suggestion of a Bollinger NV. I shall have to admit my bias here and state that Bolly is pretty much my favourite drink ever (at least my favourite drink that I can actually buy anywhere), but it was clear from the outset that this was a step up from the previous bottle. Bollinger is a different style to most of the other champagnes sub £50. It is fermented in wood and aged on the lees for quite a while, which gives it a slightly heavier, breadier, briochey flavour that is simply absent from most champagnes. It still possesses that distinct ‘champagney’ flavour, but without quite so much acidity or florality. It definitely made the Ash smoked fish more palatable, but then I think that it would improve pretty much anything.
After the Bolly, we decided to crack open a rather unusual bottle of beer that I had picked up that morning at a flea market near the coast for a quid. With a provenance like that (I had previously bought a couple of ancient bottles of wine for pennies the same stall which were utterly undrinkable, one reminding me of shoe-polish) we didn’t have high hopes, but Bass Extra Strong Royal Brew Lager: Specially brewed for the Royal Wedding, 29th of July 1981 proved to be perfectly drinkable, and even enjoyable. This malty brew, concocted to celebrate the (then) impending marriage of Lady Di to Prince Charles did not state its ABV on the label, but did state its original gravity. With a quick bit of Googling, we came to the estimate of “about 8%”, which probably explains how this “lager” survived so well.
The label claims that it is a lager, but as you can see from the picture, it looks like no lager I’ve ever had before. The clouding is probably due to its recent transportation, but the dark colour is potentially due to its age. This tasted like a strong, fairly sweet, dark ale and went surprisingly well with smoked fish. There was only a half-pint bottle of this, which everybody tried a bit of, prompting one taster to comment “it was brewed before she was married, and now she’s been dead longer than she was married”. Quite.
Our last bottle was the Alpha Zeta co-operative’s “C” Chardonnay 2014 from the Veneto region in the North of Italy. Alpha Zeta is a co-operative with only one grower who has any plantings of chardonnay; this is essentially a single-vineyard wine at co-op prices. Alas, a quadruple spirit and mixer, topped off with plentiful champagne and 34 year old beer had knackered my tastebuds by this point. Adam seemed to quite enjoy it, but I dismissed it as tasting “like relatively pleasant cheap chardonnay” and continued to sip on the much superior Bollinger that had been generously topped up just prior to opening the Alpha.
Also present at the tasting was a Domaine de la Renjarde Cotes du Rhone Villages 2013, which is yet to be opened.
Bottles and sources:
Fortnum and Mason Grand Cru Blanc des Blancs – Fortnum and Mason, 181 Piccadilly, London. (£32.50) Kindly provided by BF
Bollinger NV – Widely available, (standard price £40-45, but sometimes available for substantially less on offer in supermarkets). Kindly provided by LF
Bass Extra Strong Royal Brew Lager: Specially brewed for the Royal Wedding, 29th of July 1981 – Friendly Guy with Beard at Tynemouth Market, Tynemouth Metro Station, Tyne and Wear, Open Saturdays and Sundays approximately 9AM-3PM (£1 – not widely available) Provided by Matt.
“C” Chardonnay by Alpha Zeta 2014 (£8.34), Domaine de la Renjarde 2013 (£14.04), Caronne Ste Gemme 1998 (£19.74) – Richard Granger Wines, West Jesmond Metro Station, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 3HH Provided by Matt.
I must put in a personal note that Richard Granger Wines is probably one of the best wine shops I’ve ever had the privilege to shop in. It is in a curious location, being a set of rooms in a victorian station, but the range is fantastic and the prices very competitive, if unusually specific. The two gentlemen who work there are extremely knowledgeable and friendly and will often indulge me in wine chat whilst offering excellent advice on what to try. Open Monday-Friday 0830 until 1800 and Saturday until 1300.
Smoke & Spice 