The Six (or Seven) Nations of Wine & Cheese
We were delighted to be asked back to give another wine and cheese talk at a local sports & social club last week. Our wine and cheese tasting events take on many forms and themes which is what makes putting them on so enjoyable. This year, as with last, our subject, topically; The Six Nations - six wines and six cheeses celebrating one of sport’s greatest tournaments.
The start of the men’s Six Nations rugby tournament is a focal point in every year; the back of bleak midwinter, the arrival of cheerful perennials, slightly longer daylight hours, the opportunity to cheerfully chide Celtic friends and family on each others team’s misgivings over a pint or two. It marks the start of the year, proper, and is usually the first real opportunity to reacclimatise to English sporting heartbreak for another twelve months.
For the tasting last week, we paired Rathfinny Brut Rosé (England) with Brillat Savarin, Le Peewit Sauvignon Gris (both France) with Killeen Gouda (Ireland), La Vis Pinot Nero (Italy) with Golden Cenarth (Wales) and Big Beltie Cabernet Sauvignon (France) with St Andrew’s Cheddar (Scotland). It’s a starting line up that, obviously wine-wise, leans more heavily on the capacity of the continental nations to produce greater quantities of wine than the British and Irish, however the cheese side of the tasting is more equally divided.
In a bid to, borrowing heavily from Lord Reith here, educate, entertain and inform, we do like to throw a curveball or two into our tasting evenings. With the event’s sporting theme, it felt only right to bring out the orange at half time, so after our patrons had polished off their second wine and cheese pairing to bring the first half of the evening to a close, we opened the orange wine for some (more) refreshment.
Georgia is the historical home of orange wine, indeed all wine, as modern winemaking has evolved from this part of the world. Orange wine (white wine with the skins left on and the bits left in during fermentation, to simplify) has been quite the fashionable drink among hipsters and wine aficionados looking for something a bit different over the last decade or so.
Allowing the juice to have contact with more than just the grape’s skin gives orange wine all kinds of interesting flavours and textures. We weren’t quite sure how the crowd were going to take to it, but in classic Henry fashion he assured Nicola the punters would lap it up…
From the southern slopes of the Caucasus mountains comes Bedoba’s Orange. Bedoba was established over a decade ago by veteran local winemaker Nugzar Ksovreli and Swiss entrepreneur Thierry Fontannaz who endeavoured to bottle the genius, the history and extraordinary sense of place of the Kakheti wine region. They set out to produce the country’s renowned Saperavi red wine but have diversified in recent years to white grapes too.
The Bedoba Orange is a blend of Georgian varieties, namely Rkatsiteli and Kisi. The Rkatsiteli is made in the traditional way, fermented and aged in earthenware pots, while the Kisi is fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks before both are blended and bottled. A wine of great texture and complexity - discover notes of dried apricot and orange peel with honey and herby hints. A fabulous example of an orange wine and of the wines of Kakheti, it is delightful on its own, or on the night, we served it with our super-indulgent spooning gorgonzola. A perfect match.
