Berrys, BBC Food Show anchor an indulgent weekend

Truth is, most of our weekends revolve around good food and wine.  But this one was a bit more festive than usual.  I'm abandoning my husband to head off to the States for Thanksgiving week, cutting into the weekends on either side.  So I wanted to make sure our last full weekend before my departure was something special.  A kind of romantic gateway into the holiday season.

We started with a tutored tasting at Berry Brothers' Basingstoke offices on Friday, dedicated to exploring the Left and Right Banks in Bordeaux.  At £90 a ticket this is a serious investment in wine education, but it was for limited numbers (12), sold out and ... when considered critically ... worth the price.  We had generous samples of 11 wines, none of them retailing for less than about £40 a bottle.  The most expensive went for a whopping £190, some were no longer available to purchase, and £70 was a reasonable average bottle price.  Realistically, it was a way to taste wines we'd never otherwise get a chance to sample.

We both took detailed notes, asked copious questions, and … floating on a cloud of grape-fuelled euphoria … left our tasting notes in the taxi.  So I can't give you the details I intended.  Here are the highlights I remember.

Nine reds, two whites, one champagne.  The last not Bordeaux, of course, but evidently even the growers in the area reject their own sparkling stuff for the traditional.  This one was a 2000 vintage R&L Legras and here, happily, I am a cheap date.  I found it too yeasty, too bold with honey and fruit notes, and not sparkling enough.  My preference runs to drier, more biscuity sparkling wines with a simpler taste profile, most of which can be acquired for less than this bottle's £65 price.

We moved on to a white, there to prove the point that Bordeaux does produce them.  Perfectly drinkable, but unexceptional.  It's the reds the region is famous for, and that's where we spent our time.  We learned that cabernet sauvignon dominates on the left bank, where soil is stonier, and Merlot on the right because it copes better with clay, but that all good Bordeaux wines are blends.  I clearly preferred the left bank wines, finding the right too tannic and sharp.  Though, admittedly, those wines improved with the strong cheeses provided; everything here is really to be matched with fine food, not drunk on its own.

Good value Margaux
The left bank reds were all rich in black fruits, old enough for their tannins to have mellowed into magnificent complexity.  This is where the difference between a perfectly acceptable, moderately-priced bottle and a fine wine becomes clear.  With these, there were multiple scents on the nose, and when you drank, noticeable shifts in taste as the wine lingered in your mouth.  The initial hit, holding a mouthful and what you got on the finish would all be substantively different.  My favourite, if memory serves, was the 2000 Chateau Giscours from Margaux.  You'll no doubt recognise the name; Chateau Margaux makes one of the most famous red wines in the world.  This is nearby.

Berry's official tasting notes say:  "Dark ruby. Fragrant and full bodied and flattering. Solid with some lead pencil character. A big beefy mouthful but definitively left bank. This may well be good value and provide lots of solid pleasure, but it will never be subtle."  Yup.  Is that describing my taste in reds, or me?

"Good value" is clearly in the eye of the beholder; this goes for £92 a bottle.  I won't be popping up to Berry's to get a case for the Christmas table.  The tasting, however, does give you insight into how a great wine develops.  Buy the 2013 now and it's £22.50 a bottle.  Lay it down for 13 years, and you should have something akin to the pricey 2000 I liked.  In wine, as in so many things, time = money.

The food and spirits show
It's been fascinating to watch this show evolve over the years.  I first encountered it as the London
Wine Show, when we were all getting serious about understanding what we were drinking.  That merged in with a food show as attention turned to the whole picture.  The BBC took over sponsorship and now it's a festival of foodie delight, packed with celebrity chefs, cooking demonstrations and hundreds of vendors offering everything for the kitchen.

A few years ago, I remember the big trend being artisan bakers.  This year, it was boutique distilleries.  There were at least 20 scattered through the show floor, most displaying their beautiful little copper stills and the array of ingredients they infuse their products with.  Gins led the way but there were almost as many vodkas.  While fine with mixers, in almost every case these were suitable … and even preferred … for drinking neat.  The careful distilling practices stripped out the alcohol burn and left something mellow, sippable and well-flavoured.  In some cases, very well.  Toffee vodka was on several stands and was clearly a popular Christmas option.  Though with the alcohol percentages involved, dangerous stuff.

We succumbed to Black Cow pure milk vodka.  They distil the world's only dairy-based vodka from cheese whey, a bi-product from the Barbers' family dairy in Somerset. (The curds go into some tasty cheddar.)  The vodka is, unsurprisingly, creamy in taste.  And so unusual, we couldn't resist.  Our odd assortment of other shopping also included: a variety pack of Wyke Farms Cheddar; jars of crema di pistacchio from a Sicilian importer; light sparkling Japanese sake; a bulk buy on the Eat Water Slim Noodles that are my lifeline when I'd dieting seriously; Oz Clark's latest wine guide (autographed); a new pepper mill; some clever re-usable storage lids and a seriously high-end steam iron.  No, it has nothing to do with food, but we needed to upgrade and it was a great deal.

We were tempted by, but avoided:  A £959 gizmo, as used on Masterchef, that replaces your food processor, blender and stock pot; a Burgundian wine importer who let us sample his best stuff and then was trying to get us to buy more than £1000 worth; all manner of posh salamis and pork products from around the world; tempting varieties of gourmet chocolate and lots and lots of cakes.

An audience with the masters
They seem to have finally gotten the traffic flows right at Olympia.  This show was crowded, but not at the uncomfortable levels of our last visit.  Perhaps because there are now sister shows in Birmingham and Glasgow, and back-to-back sessions in several theatres draw crowds off the show floor.  For us, these sessions are what elevate this from a fun bit of shopping to an entire day out.  Many are free in theatres scattered around the hall, but the serious talent performs in an auditorium with ticketed, assigned seats.  You get to choose one show with your overall ticket purchase, and can add on more for £5 each.

We chose Michel Roux Jr. and Tom Kerridge, two big favourites in the Bencard household.  Both are exactly like their television personalities.  Roux is suave, sophisticated and elegantly confident with a constant undertone of wry humour.  Kerridge is the simple West Country lad made good, a larger-than-life, exuberant, charmingly self-deprecating man of the people.

Roux spun tales of his time as a junior chef at the Elysee Palace, knocking up Sunday brunch to satisfy Mitterand's huge appetite.  He created it as we watched:  scrambled eggs laced with double cream, served in oversized, savoury choux pastry buns, topped with slices of chicken breast sautéed in a port and veal stock sauce.  Jaw-droppingly indulgent, and it's inspired me to try my hand at choux for Christmas.

Kerridge managed a three course meal in the same time, assistants flying to finish bits and pieces for him as he kept us as entertained as a stand-up comic, telling tales of the origin and development of his two-Michelin starred pub.  I remember his eggs benedict done with lobster, guinea fowl braised atop a stew of mixed veg and potatoes, and can't remember the dessert.  I was concentrating too hard, by that point, on his announcement of a new pub in Marlow.  He's opening on 29 November, just down the street from his famous Hand and Flowers, in what had been the Coach and Horses.  (He didn't mention whether he was renaming.)  Most critically, this place doesn't take reservations, which is quite a relief for anyone who's discovered the wait for a weekend table at the original is a full year.  There's very little news about this floating about on the internet.  I suspect he's going for a soft launch to work any wrinkles out before he throws the full publicity at it.

So there's your top tip for the Christmas season.  Get to Kerridge's Coach and Horses in its first few months, before it gets famous and you have to wait for hours for your non-bookable table.