Would you like to see the food list, Sir?

You know you have a mild fixation when you spend the first ten minutes in a restaurant deciding which wine to drink and then hurriedly try to find something on the menu to eat with it. I suspect most people are the other way around.

But matching food and wine is a rewarding process that brings out the best of both - so we should give it some thought.

Like wine tasting, the key is to keep it simple and back your own judgement. Rather than focus on the specific dish or ingredient, think of food in broader terms such as creamy, delicate, rich, spicy etc. The same applies to the wines - consider if they are light, full bodied, fruity or smooth and don't worry about the grape variety.

Generally you want the food and the wine to match each other in terms of depth and fullness of flavour otherwise one will overpower the other. So a gently rounded white Burgundy would work with a creamy fish pie, or a concentrated red Bordeaux with succulent roast beef. But also look for enjoyable contrasts e.g. the tart liveliness of a Tuscan red will cut through the gooey texture of a lasagne.

I got it wrong recently when I opened a powerful red early in the evening, which was intimidating on its own. But later with a hearty casserole it was perfectly tamed. So I've added some food pairing suggestions to my website to help remind us of the joys of matching good wine with good food.

Click here to take a look:

Should we trust the professionals?

There was an article about wine tasting being junk science in the press recently. Professional tasters and awards panels are highly influential but one winemaker (who has won several gold awards) claims the whole process is a lottery. His research showed that professional tasters show little consistency or reliability in judging wines.

Part of the reason is wine is chemically complex so the same wine can taste quite different with variations in temperature, exposure to air etc. and likewise our taste buds do not respond in exactly the same way from one day to the next. Thought provoking stuff indeed and the article attracted 425 reader comments expressing their own opinions.

So who should we trust with our wine recommendations? These days the Internet allows us to rely on collective opinion - think TripAdvisor or the 5 star review system on Amazon. The problem is there are just too many wines for a wine comparison website to work.

So if the professionals aren't as reliable as we thought and there are no handy websites to tell us what to buy - we're left with our own judgement. Which is exactly what wine tasting is all about. Wine preferences are entirely personal and there is no right or wrong. We should not be afraid to  back our own judgement and the majority of the 425 comments expressed the same view. We are all capable of differentiating between tastes we like and dislike - so at a basic level we are all qualified wine tasters.

However, as a merchant it's my job to select wines that many customers will enjoy - so I can't just go with my own preference every time. I need to be sure that the wines on my list have genuine quality and are excellent examples of their grape variety and region. The best advice comes from the people who live where the wine is made. They have been drinking local wines for generations and can tell me objectively which winemakers stand out. That is why I go personally to wine regions to select my suppliers. It's a time consuming process, but I think it's the most reliable way.

Hedonist Wines are wines the locals drink >

Should we buy British?

Some say the problem facing the English wine industry is lack of awareness. But in conversations I have about wine I'm surprised how often the subject of English wine comes up. Is it any good? Why don't you sell it?

On a recent trip to Cornwall I visited a well-respected vineyard and sampled some of their wines. The rosé I tried was excellent, and the sparkling wines were also very good. But because of the recent bad summers they have not made any red wine for two years. The simple truth is that the UK is not warm enough to make decent red wine - even in a good year.

Back to the rosé and the fizz. These were genuinely enjoyable wines but as a merchant the issue I have is price. I currently sell a very similar rosé from a top appellation in the Loire, and it's less expensive. And the price issue really kicks in with the sparkling wines. We all know that good Champagne is expensive, but are we ready to spend similar amounts on English sparkling wine?
You don't have to look too hard to find good quality sparkling wines below Champagne prices. Regional French wines such as Cremant de Bourgogne are made using the traditional method and are literally half the price of the English wines I tasted. I'm all in favour of supporting English wines and small producers but value for money is a key ingredient - so for now my vote stays with Cremant de Bourgogne and Menetou-Salon rosé.

You can buy them online here:

A case for Columbo

In the classic episode "Any Old Port in a Storm", Lieutenant Columbo traps his suspect by pretending to be a wine connoisseur. The hapless criminal correctly identifies that a particular wine has been ruined by excess heat, not knowing that the bottle was from his own spoiled collection.

Great detective drama - and it raises the important issue of wine storage. Wine is certainly sensitive to temperature fluctuations but it's not necessary to keep wine in perfectly regulated conditions. I have visited many wineries that store their wine in ancient stone-walled barns with no artificial heating or cooling. The thickness of the walls protects the wine from the extremes of winter cold and summer heat, but the ambient temperature inside definitely increases in summer and cools considerably in winter.

This is not a problem for the wines. In fact the seasonal variation in temperatures allows wine to evolve. It hibernates in the winter - changing very little, and 'comes on' in the warmer summer months, integrating and softening in the bottle.

However, it is important to differentiate between seasonal temperature changes that happen very slowly and rapid temperature changes in the home caused by central heating. The biggest problem is the dryness, which causes corks to shrink, allowing oxygen into the wine and spoiling it - and this can happen in a few months.

So if you're planning to store wine at home for any extended period of time you do need to shield it from daily temperature changes, direct sunlight and especially from the dryness caused by central heating. Obviously a cellar is ideal but if you don't have one try the garage, a larder floor, or under the stairs. If you plan to keep wine for several years my advice would be to borrow some cellar space from a friend and repay them with a bottle when it's ready.

Fortunately Hedonist Wines are sold ready to drink, so that's at least one headache that can be avoided.

www.hedonistwines.co.uk

Youth is overrated

In wine that is. I'm sure many of us would like to be a few years younger, but when it comes to fine wine youth is rarely a virtue.

I was asked recently about 'en primeur' wines and personally I think the concept is overrated these days. In the past buying en primeur (wine still in barrel at the winery) afforded an opportunity to buy fine wines at a relatively low cost before market forces started pushing up prices.

These days there are a number of fundamental problems with this proposition. First, I have seen prices steadily rising for en primeur wines as merchants try to make a decent margin on these sales. Combine this with the fact that wine prices have stagnated recently - and it's hard to see the benefit of buying young and parting with your cash early.

Second, when you do finally receive your wines in the UK (this can be up to 2 years later) you have to pay Duty, VAT and shipping at prevailing rates - all of which are steadily rising.

Third, you then have to store your wines for a number of years before they reach their peak.

It seems to me that this arrangement suits merchants much more than wine drinkers as they get their money up front and still make a healthy margin.

I guess the Holy Grail of fine wine is:

- Great quality
- Great price
- Ready now

And I think I might have found the answer. In my travels buying wines for my business I have occasionally come across producers who quietly retain small quantities of back-vintages, which they keep in perfect cellar conditions at the winery. The surprising thing is they don't always charge a big premium for these older vintages. I suppose in the end it's unsold stock and they want to sell it.

As an importer I am in a great position to offer these wines to my customers when the opportunity arises. Older vintages are not always available and you need to know a bit about vintage variation to buy the right wines.

So when people ask me whether they should throw their money at the latest en primeur release I think I will point them at some of my older vintage stocks and do them a favour.

The wine region with an identity crisis ?

I normally have a reasonably good idea what to expect when I visit a wine region as they are generally well defined in terms of the style of the wines and the location of the best vineyards. However, at the end of last year I spent a few days in the Roussillon (South of France, near Perpignan) and it is one of the most varied and enigmatic wine regions I have visited.

The landscape and ancient vine stock tell you the Roussillon has much in common with the Catalan region of Spain, which it adjoins to the south - and the region was in fact under Spanish control for a brief period of history.

The area inland of Perpignan is the Vallee de L'Agly and it rises steeply towards the edge of the Pyrenees offering stunning views of snow capped mountains over the top of vines. The geography provides very cool nights to balance the warm days and steep hillsides for good exposure to the sun. It's not all perfect though. There is precious little rainfall and the older vine stock is very low yielding.

In recent years ambitious winemakers have flocked to these schist soils to breathe new life into the region with a focus on high quality wines. It is an extraordinary area for diversity with many different indigenous red and white grape varieties that are blended differently depending on what the winemaker grows and the style they prefer. There is also a wide selection of dessert wines ranging from the light floral Muscats to the dark and brooding Maury wines that are more akin to Port. 

After multiple tastings I was very impressed with the quality and drinkability of Roussillon wines. And the dessert wines particularly offered exceptional value for money. But because of the variety in styles I was unable to identify what a typical Roussillon red or white should taste like. The wines seemed to lack a definitive style and I did not get a strong sense of 'terroir' that wines from other French regions have in abundance. This is not necessarily a problem as good wine is good wine, it's just unusual to feel so free to judge for myself a well known wine region.

In the end I opted to buy some excellent Roussillon wines that in my opinion seemed to emulate the style of another great wine region - the Rhone. Chateau de Rey is situated on the other side of Perpignan - right next to the sea. The soil is extremely fertile and the Tramontane winds allow the grapes to rest on the vines longer for optimum ripeness without mildew setting in. The result is a selection of wines with fantastic fullness and intensity of flavour - and a wonderful expression of the grape varieties. The dominant grape variety is Syrah for the red and Roussanne for the white, much like you would find in expensive northern Rhone wines such as Hermitage. I also bought their Rivesaltes dessert wine - deep tawny in colour with flavours of caramel and raisins. It goes fantastically well with cheese.

Perhaps I failed to truly get to grips with the grape varieties of the Roussillon, but I found some very good wines.

You can buy these Roussillon wines at Hedonist Wines