Loire wines - http://www.domainebergerie.fr/

Domaine De la Bergerie is perhaps my favourite vineyard in all the world so far!
A wine family for 7 generations and this vineyard owned since 1964 it is nestled on slopes just past the sleepy village of Champ sur Layon and is beautifully laid out with the vines surrounding the tasting room.  It is the range, quality and reasonable price of the wines that is so staggering.  Yves Guegniard  makes at least 3 fabulous reds, a Rose,  a range of whites from dry to dessert wine & a really good Loire fizz.

The Cabernet franc dominated  La Cerisiae  with its intense blackcurrant and licorice flavours (about £5) is  a high quality Loire red for the price.   However then we get two unusual ones - Chant du Bois which is a lovely age worthy but still approachable, complex, stark Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc then finally the amazing  Evanescence  which requires some lengthy time in the cellar to soften the tannins but then will leave you with a wonderful complex minty blackcurrant 100% cab sauvignon not from Bordeaux but from the Loire!

 I would suggest that you ring ahead and book lunch at the fabulous restaurant on site with its vineyard views, which is run by M. Guegniard`s son in law. La Table Bergerie

We have eaten there 3 times. The cooking is delicate and well seasoned with fantastic wine matching from the Domaine`s full range which includes Chenin Blanc from Savennieres.

Camembert fondue - the perfect starter

I will be honest...... I never saw the point in Camembert as a cheese until I had it in Normandie in it`s unpasteurised form from Lait Cru. When you are buying it look for the words "moulé à la louche" which means the cheese has been manually lifted by ladle into the molds.

 It really comes into its own when it is served hot, fluid and fragrant.  The flavours explode when it has been baked and served in a pot.
Great for a starter at a dinner party (1 cheese for 4 people) or for an informal lunch.  Just put a cheese into a pot for the oven (as it needs containing as it melts) and bake it at 180 degrees celcius for 20 mins. You can insert some garlic cloves to taste before putting in the oven!
Serve it with chopped up carrots, pieces of crusty bread and anything else you like to dip into melted cheese.
As to a matching wine I would serve a Chenin from the Loire - either a Vouvray or a Savennieres but frankly we have never found anything better than a bottle of chilled Normandie cider (Brut is best) - but just get the most refined appley cider you can your hands on and serve it in wine glasses.  It will surprise you as to  how well it matches the cheese!

 

Italian wine bargains!!

This is just a quick note for anyone who has wanted to try some expensive italian wines for a bargain price. Piemonte wines (https://piemonte-wines.com/) are doing a ridiculous sale  this month - any wine for £12.  Now normally you might think £12 is a lot of money for a bottle but in this instance it includes all their Barolo wine!

Barolo is probably the noblest and most famous of italian reds, made from the nebbiolo grape.  It is aged for at least three years, dating from January 1, after its harvest. Two of those years must be spent in large 25hl slavonian oak barrels. So as a result it is highly priced and has a reputation for unapproachability in it`s youth ie they are designed to mature and improve after 10-20 years in the bottle.  

Noel and Tricia Desnos have designed a wonderfully informative website with videos from the producers and tasting notes for every wine.  One of their Barolos was for sale last year at £45 a bottle so £12  is an absolute steal, tho` these are for laying down for a few years.

Recent vintages have been good, especially the 2005, of which the Cagliero Ravera 2005 from the Barolo region south of Alba where the soil is very different, will be drinkable fairly soon.  The wines from further east in Serralunga d'Alba have a different terroir and are more muscular and tannic and need much longer in the bottle.

Waterloo - Perfect Beef Wellington and 3 different red wines

Anne has rightly been famous for her Beef Wellington or as the french say with a bit of post Waterloo bitterness "Boeuf en croute", which has become a signature dish in the family, BUT  to our consternation she has improved  on perfection after having read the Guardian article on the perfect Beef Wellington.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/dec/08/how-to-cook-perfect-beef-wellington

Firstly the beef has to be wonderful and we got fillet from Fawcetts in Ingleby Greenhow (http://www.av-fawcett.co.uk/content/butchers) as his meat is the best we have had anywhere in the world! As you can see Anne cooked it to the point of rarity so it required some decent red wine and given our guests this meant some different wines to cater for taste.  I chose a 2006 Ribera Reserva  from Spain - an oaked Tempranillo it has a lighter blackberry fruitiness with spicy undertones that I got from Laithwaites a couple of years ago on sale.  Then from France a 2005 Gros Caillou from Chateau Le Chabrier south of Bergerac (http://chabrier.jimdo.com/)  which is a fairly classic St-Emilion blend of Merlot, Cab Sav and Cab Franc (but at half the price).  This wine is made by a lovely guy called Pierre Carles whose family also owns property in St-Emilion.  Both wines required decanting as they had thrown some sediment and I washed the bottles out with plain water and poured the wine back in to breathe slowly for a couple of hours.  The Bergerac is like a cru bourgeois  claret in style with perfumed aromatic oak on the nose but deep tangy black fruit lingering forever in the mouth. Both wines were a bit challenging without food but were released with the meat.

The final wine was a sweet fruity Amarone which I just bought from Lidl this week as it was on special offer at £9.99 reduced from an earlier price last year of £20. Much more approachable but quite alcoholic at 16% however lacking the subtleties and complexity of the other two.  Which wine went best with the Duke of Wellington`s beef? Of course by a mile it was the frenchie!!  Waterloo all over again!!
ps you can get the Gros Caillou and other Le Chabrier wines from the French Wine Project (http://thefrenchwineproject.com/bergerac/)

We are back

So after a lengthy absence I have decided that despite the fact that this is likely to be read by almost no-one that I may scribe a few thoughts.....mostly around food and wine as they are the passions of our lives.

James 9th birthday

Well the famous cakemaker struck again - last year it was a Tiger tank this year a Mathilda tank! Which for the less well informed was the main battle tank for the 8th army in the desert campaign against Rommel.
James had a very happy time with 5 of his friends playing games in the garden making their own pizzas and watching the stardust dvd in the hut with popcorn and jelly snakes.
Altogether one of our easiest parties as for 90 mins of it we watched the French open tennis ladies final

purple haze

Angus and i had a little free time over the weekend due to unforeseen sickness in expected visitors. So we tackled the needs of our hut, it was dried out and unprotected, requiring a new coat of anti-fungal preservative/weather protector. We had decided a lovely Scandinavian pale blue, as seen in Sweden would be a lovely alternative to boring green and brown. The perfect stain was ordered from the Internet and arrived ready for applying with sprayer or paintbrush.
Here is the result after a serious attack of bad language, both of us covered in purple splatters, we gave up after doing 2 of the 4 walls.We stood back and said "Oh."


We think now we could make a really positive thing out of it and borrow some wheelie bins from Liverpool which happen to be a great colour match. Maybe even go for a bright yellow deck stain. What do you think???

April Fish in Normandy

So we went to Normandy for Easter - Anne got ill on the way down and coughed incessantly for the whole holiday and slept hardly at all. The weather was pants from the first week (tho it was worse in England) and the oil fired boiler decided to die on us and was condemned by a host of french plumbers who congregated in our cellar looking at it and muttering "c`est grave" then with a doleful expression "c`est morte"! It being the female boiler "la chaudiere".

After the installation of a new boiler, I noticed that there was a huge pool of oil under the flaming box that is an oil fired boiler - so we had to get the plombier in again to sort that out - after that all was well except it was dribbling water at the back - all that was needed was a tightening of a pipe at the back - I nearly said to the plumber that there was a problem and that I wanted him to "serrer la pipe" - I felt that maybe there was another meaning to the word "pipe" - if you look up the word at http://www.alternative-dictionaries.net/dictionary/French/ you will see how close I came to entente cordiale!

On top of all this the TV broke down and everything is closed until April 1st "Poisson d`Avril".

However we had a calvados tasting from the casks (70% alcohol), cider tasting (up to 7 years old), Poire tasting and we went to Camembert village and disovered la fosse d`Arthur, which

is a beauty spot

french delight

Its ok we are still alive, but have done more on facebook of late, however i thought you might like to see the final work in France. Here is the back yard! before and after. looking forward to lots of easter sunshine now.

The Devil may care

Nearly finished the Bond song and it is the best yet by a country mile. I have used my M-Audio Black Box for the first time, which has a fabulous array of distortion sounds. I am particularly pleased with the guitar solos - the lessons are definitely paying off.
Julie is coming round on wednesday to do the vocals then I will be mixing 2 versions - the official song entry to Penguin books for the prize of being on their new Audiobook for Sebastian Faulks novel "Devil may care" and the unrestricted megamix version with samples from Goldfinger and my tribute to the Bond theme.

Birthday fun

Its great having birthdays!! I may have more wrinkles and more grey hairs, but the presents, the food and the friends and family get better every year!
Admittedly we did go a bit overboard on the food, out to 2 amazing restaurants in 2 days, first seaham hall hotel with Rollo( also a birthday for him) and Barbara. The highlight was seeing their delight at nearly everything, the lowlight being the cepe chocolate which smelt like vomit and I could n`t even swallow!

Second meal out in Durham at the Gourmet spot, yes lots of fun with the G-spot and how to find it!!, we went with Siobhan (Recent birthday) and Gerry who are best mates with the chef Sean, so we got special treatment and lots of extras, like a glass of champagne, a taste of brown buttered toast, jam and tea ice cream!!! Yes altogether in one little creamy cold mouthful, quite incredible.
And for those of you who haven't known me very long this is what I looked like a very long time ago!! Lots of love and thanks Anne x x

Archbishop - wooly liberal or dangerous conservative

You say,” said Lord Napier (confronted as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in India by locals protesting against the suppression of suttee) “that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Worrying pronouncements were uttered this week, about sharia law in the UK, by the leader of the Anglican church who has constituents in countries where they are being persecuted by Islamic government.

This is following the as yet unresolved debate on homosexuality in the church and beautifully timed comments on the Nativity story at Christmas makes one wonder whether knowledge without wisdom is a dangerous thing.

To be a shepherd of the Gospel is a beautiful calling - it is a shame we don`t seem to have one at present.

If you click on the title you will get an article from the Times which summarises nicely the concern.

Iron Maiden - Christian band????

From the band that brought you "Bring your daughters to the slaughter" and "The number of the beast" here is the song Pilgrim on the latest Iron Maiden album where you will find these lyrics!

"To courage find and gracious will

Deliver good from ill

Clean the water clean our guilt

With us do what you will

Then will my judge appear

Bear no false angel that I hear

For only then I will confess

To my eternal hell

Now give us our holy sign

Changing water into wine

So to you we bid farewell

Kingdom of heaven to hell

Spirit holy life eternal

Raise me up take me home

Pilgrim sunrise pagan sunset

Onward journey begun.

and from the song "The greater good of God" we find:"He gave his life for us he fell upon the cross

To die for all of those who never mourn his loss

It wasn't meant for us to fell the pain again

Tell me why, tell me why"

Hmmm more obvious than many christian bands and this is a band that have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Country Love duet with Julie

So for Christmas I got a new Bass guitar from Santie - which was used to record with on Boxing day - I have completed the first and last Country song with the inestimable Julie on vocals. I have turned it into a duet as we had terrible technical problems with intermittent faults in the wiring and crackling on the vocals and a random change mid recording in the vocal effect - SO THIS IS JUST AN OUTTAKE ALRIGHT!!! All on the Di Griso myspace site www.myspace.com/degriso

"The Christmas story is a legend" says Archbishop

In the Times today is an article observing that 2007 has been a bad year for Faith what with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Philip Pullman, Mohammed the Teddy and finally the good old Archbishop expressing his opinion that the traditional Christmas story is largely legend. Good timing!!
The journalist Gerard Baker closes with the following comment "That faith, by its very nature, entails doubt. If we could be really, truly certain, about the existence of God, what, really, would be the point of it all?
It is the Christmas Story, or legend if you will, as much as anything we believe, that underlines this essential tension between faith and doubt.
You'd have thought (and certainly the pre-Christians did) that the Son of God, when He chose, would enter the world in a way that would leave no doubt who He was or that He existed.
But He chose instead to come in a way that ensured just about the maximum room for doubt; merely another barely noticed nativity in the most miserable of circumstances. If you were lucky enough to be one of those shepherds on the hills around Bethlehem who got the news from the angelic host, or one of the wise men who followed that star, you were lucky. No long, dark night of the soul for you. Instead, just one brilliant flash of celestial light and the secret of the universe was revealed.
But for the rest of us, forced to ponder the complexity of our existence and the competing implausibilities of faith and unbelief, that was surely the point of the manger, the stable, the ox and the ass. That God would choose to come among us in such a way is so strange, so inexplicable, so unbelievable, it compels us to believe. " NUFF SAID

Gale force winds over the channel

Two rock and roll crossings over a long weekend in Normandy - the return being at gale force 7-8 with massed breakage of crockery in the restaurant over lunch and a passenger being thrown out of her chair. Still we delivered the new cooker and I varnished the oak floor 3 times in one day and then the next day we set up the new kitchen as pictured, without the actual new cooker as we ran out of the required energy to actually install it.

Also lit the new woodburner and relaxed in front of it after a hard day! That was after the smoke had cleared, this was its` first time alight after all. We also did a lot of cleaning builders do seem to be very skilled at making mess. The next stage begins when the new bathroom goes in on the first floor, hey more mess to come, bring it on!

Jonnys back on the road again

Here's Jonny with his truck! This was kindly taken by the Robinsons, who keep us up to date via their blog!
Unfortunately the engine blew up (probably due to oil starvation) not long after this, however a cash injection from England ensured the replacement is now installed and he is back on the road again.

Autumn leaves

We often moan about the weather but Autumn beauty is an intoxicating blend of colour, light and shade if we take time to look.

Day out in Hartlepool

Oh yes, the climbing, adventure park that is Summerhill! We discovered it yesterday! and James and Anne discovered climbing!

Invitation to the party

Anne and I are on Facebook as well now - due to the necessity of keeping vaguely in touch with our errant adult children. I will add links onto the side menu!

I have now firmly ditched motorbiking since my last accident (which was very painful) and wrote off my beloved Yamaha 1000 V-Twin - however being the son of my father, this year has seen the renaissance of my love for guitar playing which has been quite a surprise. You don't expect a teenage dream to become true in your 40's but for me that has happened. I continue to embarrass myself by going public with my music under the name Di Griso but despite the cringeworthy mistakes (of which there are many) I have managed to persuade someone who has been in the professional music scene to record her vocals on a song I have written next wednesday. She has a black soul voice so if the experiment works I will put it up on the Di Griso site as an Mp3 download.

This weekend Anne and I or one of us are being interviewed on the local radio because we are having Michele Guinness over to stay next weekend to speak on the subject of "Invitation to the party" and launch her new book at our church. As well as that I am speaking on Apostleship on Sunday, Anne is going to London for a medical conference, tonight we are going to an evening of Stand-up comedy and live music which is hosted by my exceedingly mental GP in Stokesley just down the road - it is called Stokesley Humour And Gig - hmmm notice the acronym!