Results tagged “wine”

with the Telegraph's wine editor, Victoria Moore

How to drink your way out of a rut:

the best autumn wines this year and food to go with them.

 

You will taste and drink at least six of Victoria's current favourite wines, paired with a series of autumnal dishes cooked by Anna. You will learn how food changes wine, how to plan pairings for autumnal dinners, and how to drink extremely well without spending a fortune.  To finish we will enjoy a drink currently on its way back into fashion - port - with treats to match.

 

You will leave with a full stomach, a better understanding of food and wine pairing, and plenty of affordable ideas to fill your autumn wine rack.

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Victoria Moore is an award-winning journalist who's been writing about drinking since 1998 when she began a column in the New Statesman. She's now the wine correspondent for the Telegraph and Olive magazine, having previously written the wine column for the Guardian Saturday Weekend magazine. Victoria is also a judge for the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards. Her bestselling book, How to Drink, is a hugely readable and beautiful handbook that aims to inform, entertain and ensure you are never without the perfect drink for every occasion.

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Dates:  Weds 24th September 2014, repeated Thurs 25th September if demand

Time:  7pm to around 9.30pm

Location:  Culinary Anthropologist home teaching kitchen, London N5, near Arsenal tube

Price:  £65, or £170 for 3 places (ie. £25 discount)

How to book:  Email anna@culinaryanthropologist.org  You will be asked to pay the class fee in advance to confirm your booking.  Please see the Culinary Anthropologist terms & conditions before booking.

 

Please note that this class is not suitable for vegetarians since the menu is fixed.

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Comments from previous How to Drink class guests:

"Fabulous wine! Fabulous cocktails! Loved it!"

"A really wonderful evening - beautiful food and drinks."

"Fabulous darling! When's the next one?"

"Excellent, as always!"

"Perfection!"

Coq au vin is traditionally made with a one-year-old cockerel - full flavoured and perfect for the stew pot.  If you can get a real coq, brilliant (a few good butchers supply them - in London try the Ginger Pig, delivered to your door by Hubbub).  Otherwise use the legs of regular chickens - one per person.  Legs have more flavour than breasts, and are more suited to slow cooking.

To get 10 pieces from the bird:  Cut out the spine and save for stock.  Take the legs off and divide into thighs and drumsticks.  Take the wings off, remove the wingtips and save them for stock.  Remove the breast plate and cut the breast in half, then divide each breast piece into two.  You should have 10 pieces.  Or ask your butcher to do it.

This recipe is adapted from one by Thomasina Miers. Escabeche usually refers to a technique of frying fish and then marinating it in a vinegary liquid with onions, spices and herbs. Flavourings vary enormously from country to country; escabeche is popular in Italy, Spain, Latin America and the Philippines.

This dish is a relative of good old fish and chips, which is not as British as one might think. They share origins in a dish beloved of the Shahs of Persia some 1500 years ago - sikbāj - sweet and sour stewed beef. This later made its way around the Arabic world, with fish replacing beef in Christian parts. The amazing history is told by Prof Dan Jurafsky on his blog, 'The Language of Food'.

Dan writes: "The word escabeche came to Spanish from Catalan, which acquired it from its neighbour, Occitan, who got it from the Genoese, who stole it from the Neapolitans, and so on, back eventually east to the Arabic of Baghdad and the Persian of Ctesiphon." And the story continues with the Jews being expelled from Spain and Portugal and going to northern Europe, taking their fish dishes with them. Finally, in England, Belgian frites were married with battered and fried fish doused with vinegar: fish and chips.

An evening of wine tasting, cocktail mixing, eating and learning about the best things to drink this autumn, with expert drinks writer Victoria Moore.  Come and join us!

You’ll be welcomed with a Cava-Calva aperitif and then we'll taste and compare three different chenin blancs and learn all about this grape.  Moving on there will be a selection of sloe gins to compare and of course tips for making your own, plus Victoria's favourite cocktail using the purple infusion - sloe gin sours.

We'll then make our way through several different styles of sherry, with tapas to match each one, and learn all about this unique set of wines.  To finish we'll indulge in some Pedro Ximenez ice cream.  Yum.  We’ll keep you fed with snacks throughout the class and send you home with a pack of Victoria’s recommendations and my recipes.

Victoria Moore has been writing about drinking since 1998 when she began a column in the New Statesman.  She is now the wine writer for the Telegraph, and previously wrote the wine column for the Guardian Saturday Weekend magazine.  Her bestselling book - How to Drink - is a hugely readable and beautiful handbook that aims to inform, entertain and ensure you are never without the perfect drink for every occasion.


Dates:  Thursday 6th October, repeated Friday 7th October 2011

Time:  6.30pm - 8.30pm (ish)

Location:  London N5 (Arsenal tube 2 mins walk)

Price:  £50.  10% discount if you book 3 places.

To book:  Email Anna  Please read the booking terms & conditions before booking your place.  Thank you.

And look out for our How to Drink at Christmas classes in December!

An evening of wine tasting, cocktail mixing, eating and learning about the best things to drink this summer, with expert drinks writer Victoria Moore.  Come and join us!

You’ll be welcomed with an aperitif and a quick word on choosing wine glasses, then guided through a fascinating tasting of four glorious summer wines - Victoria’s picks for the season - with canapés that match.  We’ll move on to delicious Lebanese mint and lemon coolers and then make our own Pimm’s from scratch to compare with the original.  To finish there will be stunning watermelon martinis with Feta, olive and mint salad.  We’ll keep you fed with snacks throughout the class and send you home with a pack of Victoria’s recommendations and my recipes.

Victoria Moore has been writing about drinking since 1998 when she began a column in the New Statesman.  She is now the wine writer for the Telegraph, and previously wrote the wine column for the Guardian Saturday Weekend magazine.  Her bestselling book - How to Drink - is a hugely readable and beautiful handbook that aims to inform, entertain and ensure you are never without the perfect drink for every occasion.


Dates:  Thursday 16th June, repeated Friday 17th June 2011

Time:  6.30pm - 8.30pm

Location:  London N5 (Arsenal tube 2 mins walk)

Price:  £50.  10% discount if you book 3 places.

To book:  Email Anna  Please read the booking terms & conditions before booking your place.  Thank you.

And look out for our How to Drink in Autumn classes in October!

An evening of wine tasting, cocktail mixing, nibbling and learning about the best things to drink this spring, with expert drinks writer Victoria Moore.  Come and join us!

Victoria Moore has been writing about drinking since 1998 when she began a column in the New Statesman.  She is now the wine writer for the Telegraph, and previously wrote the wine column for the Guardian Saturday Weekend magazine.  Her bestselling book - How to Drink - is a hugely readable and beautiful handbook that aims to inform, entertain and ensure you are never without the perfect drink for every occasion.

We are running a series of seasonal drinks classes, starting with Spring.  You will be guided through a tasting of several of Victoria’s favourite Rieslings, which will highlight the differences between German and New World versions and sweeter and drier styles.  We will test and discuss the interaction of food and wine on the palate, and Victoria will explain how to pair food with white wines.  Moving on to cocktails, we’ll taste a series of rums and make the ultimate daiquiri before learning all about Campari and its role in numerous cocktails.  The class will end with a round of Victoria’s signature cocktail - the very delicious Baby Joe.  We’ll keep you fed with snacks throughout the class and send you home with a pack of Victoria’s recommendations and recipes.

Dates:  Wednesday 27th April, repeated Thursday 28th April 2011

Time:  6.30pm - 8.30pm

Location:  London N5 (Arsenal tube 2 mins walk)

Price:  £50.  10% discount if you book 3 places.

To book:  Email Anna  Please read the booking terms & conditions before booking your place.  Thank you.

And look out for our How to Drink in Summer classes in June!

Today Barnaby thought he'd get Anna something nice for her birthday.  He'd noticed that she hadn't been getting her usual booze ration recently, what with spending so much time in Muslim countries.  He didn't have any money to buy any, but recently he'd heard the villagers here in Tengrela (in Burkina Faso) talking about a special kind of wine they get from the trees.

This seemed unlikely, but in the early morning he climbed up a ronier palm tree to have a look - and found a big calabash full of juice.  It didn't look much like wine, but when he had a taste he realised it was already fermenting and just a bit alcoholic, although very fresh-tasting - a bit like fresh coconut juice.  Delicious!

So he settled down with a bottle to wait for her to finish cooking (Awa was teaching her how to make pea beignets and peanut sweet potatoes - yum).  But after a couple of hours waiting, he was really quite thirsty, and thought he should just check the palm wine was still OK.

And a good thing he did!  It had been fermenting all day, and was much stronger now.  She probably wouldn't like the strong taste, he thought - much safer just to drink it. 

We finally said goodbye to Poland (we'll have to go back one day, there's so much more to see) and drove south through Slovakia to Hungary.  As we were a bit behind schedule we rushed through Slovakia in a day, admiring the snowy Tatras mountains and warming ourselves up in hot springs (and some of the best saunas we've seen) at the fairly-tacky-but-wonderful Tatralandia resort.

It was a shame not to have longer, but this did mean more days to check out all the wonderful Hungarian food - and wine - and more time to zigzag all over the place rather than planning a sensible route.  We learnt lots, but three things stick out.  Firstly, the wine's excellent.  Secondly, most of Hungary's pretty flat.  OK, really flat - think East Anglia but with more moustaches.  Thirdly, goulash isn't what you think it is ...

Today Barnaby set off to explore the cellars of Tokaj to find out just what makes the wine here so golden and yummy.  Having studied the works of the 16th century alchemist Paracelsus, who believed the wine contained actual gold, he thought he could come to a more scientific conclusion. Probably something to do with botrytis.

But when Barnaby saw it (we wouldn't let him actually drink it. Not after Poland) he refused to believe it was anything so unsophisticated as rotten grapes.  We have bought several cases for him to continue his analysis.

Louis XIV is said to have called the sweet wines of the Tokaj region of Hungary "the wine of kings, and king of wines", and they've been used as diplomatic sweeteners at the highest levels for hundreds of years.  We went to find out what makes them so great, and discovered that they are still the king of wines - perhaps these days even more so than ever before.  However, they now seem to be the wines of very different kinds of kings... 

The Hungarian language is fascinating, and nowhere is this better reflected (for me at least) than in the words for 'bar': a borozó is a wine bar, and a söröző is a beer bar. 

At first sight, perhaps, you might not agree that these words are particularly fascinating.

But you'd be wrong. And here's why.

I'd known the Czechs liked their beer, but I'd had no idea they were so good at making wine.  Until we happened to visit Kroměříž, an unpronouncable old market town in southern Moravia, Czech Republic.  In the centre of town there is a huge archbishop's palace, complete with peacocks in the gardens and hundreds of barrels of aging wine in the cellars.  It turned out they'd been making and storing wine here for 800 years, and it tasted pretty fantastic too.  In fact we're drinking a bottle of their rulandské šedé right now.

When we knocked on the heavy wooden door at Domaine Weinbach we weren't sure we were in the right place.  Having had it recommended to us by our friend Jono at Chez Panisse in Berkeley (who knows a thing or two about wine), we were confident their wines would be good, but only if we could find them... 

Having driven up and down the picturesque little Alsatian valley at least four times, we finally decided to pull into the winery despite the enormous 'Domaine Faller' sign and the distinct lack of inviting 'tastings' signs for tourists like us which are displayed prominently at so many other wineries.  And when Colette Faller peered round her front door at us, she didn't look sure we were in the right place either.