Wine and Spirit Association Annual Luncheon
Just back from a great lunch held at Bordeaux Quay a restaurant in Bristol. It was The West of England Wine and Spirit Association annual luncheon and I was invited to attend by James Staughton from St Austell Brewery along with several other major clients that I used to supply, when I had my own wine agency business. (From 1974-2011)
The function started with a few glasses of Champagne from the well known houses of Taittinger, Laurent Perrier and Lanson during which time it was great to reminisce on the many buying trips I had hosted with them to Bordeaux, South West France, The Rhone Valley and Spain, for their wine buying consortium, as a matter of interest it was through hosting hundreds of such trips that Adam and I had the idea of starting SmoothRed ,furthermore at SmoothRed we still accompany our tours to the many chateaux and estates that my clients used to buy from.
We then all sat down to what I must say was a superb meal accompanied by equally good wine. The onion and gruyere tartlet which was served warm was quite delicious and was paired with two wines from Alsace, Cave de Turckheim a Riesling (with floral citrus and peach aromas quite light but nice texture) and a Pinot Gris (which had a very expressive fruity nose dry and elegant and well balanced in the mouth} both went down really well, with the tartlet.
This was followed by an extremely tasty piece of Rare Rump of Salt Marsh Lamb accompanied on the plate with Mint and Honey Mashed Parsnips,Curly Kale, Thyme and Red Wine Jus. With a choice of red wine from either 1999 Chateau Bel Air Crus Bourgeois (it was a great match drinking really well with a texture of soft ripe tannins, and lovely concentration of black fruit) the other red which I also had was a glass of the 2000 Santa Rita Floresta Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot(this is from the Maipo Valley Chile.It may have been our bottle but I found it a little too mature however still had some nice tannins but the fruit flavours were lacking) so my preference out of the two was the Bordeaux.
The dessert was Blood Orange Pannacootta which was teamed up with 2009 Ch De Myrat 2ND growth Sauternes from the commune of Barsac, which I have to declare was nectareous and when the sommelier came to our table to refill our glasses we persuaded him to leave us the bottle!!! Which we duly finished.
Finally we had a selection of British Cheeses and a glass of Vintage port which we had to guess the year of, unfortunately I did not get it, in fact I am not sure if any of the 100 odd attendees did it was from the house of Fonseca and Vintage 1985, it was surprisingly still young and fruity with good blackberry and dark fruit flavours, really full in the mouth and spicy, so fresh an excellent glass of fine port.
It was then time for us to leave and I jumped in a taxi to go to the station, to catch my train whilst on the train back to Paddington I was able to reflect on what a great day it had been, congratulations to the West of England Wine Trade for holding such a successful event.
Why not try the new SmoothRed wine tours: Wine tour Alsace or Porto Wine tour to enjoy some of these wines?
Tony Stebbings