Category — Beer/Ale

The Channel4 sponsored Taste festival comes to Leeds Milllenium Square from 5-8 June 2008, offering visitors a great opportunity to taste fine foods and wines available in the region.

Imagine a picnic in a park. Now multiply it by thousands of people. Invite all the best restaurants in the area to contribute the food, and discerning vintners to bring the bottles. Make sure some of the guests are famous chefs happy to help out with cooking hints, and organise live music to eat and drink by. This is a Taste Festival.

Amongst the wine exhibits will be Bordeaux Wines, Wines of Chile, Faustino Rioja, Wines of South Africa and Playford Ros representing Villa Sandi - Italian Proscecco producers.

Leeds Brewery and Goslings Rum will also contribute to what promises to be a great cocktail of wine and food.

For more info and tickets see www.channel4.com

The Channel 4 sponsored Taste festival comes to Edinburgh (The Meadows) from 29 May - 1 June 2008, offering visitors a great opportunity to taste fine foods and wines available in the region.

Imagine a picnic in a park. Now multiply it by thousands of people. Invite all the best restaurants in the area to contribute the food, and discerning vintners to bring the bottles. Make sure some of the guests are famous chefs happy to help out with cooking hints, and organise live music to eat and drink by. This is a Taste Festival.

Amongst the wine-related exhibits will be the Edinburgh School of Food and Wine, Portobello’s Fine Wine Co, New Zealand’s Jackson Estate Winery, Champagne merchants Lovely Bubbly, highly-rated Scottish Merchant Valvona & Crolla,Bordeaux Wines, Wines of Chile, Faustino Rioja

Being in Scotland there is also a Food & Whisky School!

For more info and tickets see www.channel4.com

If you have always dreamt of managing your own vineyard and are looking for an established estate then the sale of Old Luxters/Chiltern Valley Wines on the South Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire border may be of interest.

Perhaps an English estate was not your first choice but there is more to Old Luxters than just wine. They have a thriving brewing industry there too. The production of the Barn Ale, Dark Roast Ale and others forms an integral part of the business; they also bottle other producers ales.

The Barn Ale, incidentally, is the only micro-brewed ale to be awarded a ‘By Royal Warrant of Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’.

The estate which includes a five bedroom house and swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna and garden with orchard, the out-buildings hired out for events, the brewery and vineyard are on the market for £4 million.

Operational since 1988 Surf4Wine was one of the pioneers of the internet-based mail order wine merchant scene in the UK.

It’s a dynamic little operation and while they admit that the website has lacked in the update department recently a chat with Andrew Chapman indicates that things are about to improve. Not only is an expansion of the Oxfordshire warehouse and offices about to begin a new ‘backend’ of the website is soon to be launched. Coupled with a new staff and a range of new wines things are going from strength to strength for Surf4Wine.

The wine range is world encompassing with a slight slant of favouritism to the new world. There are many gems on the list ranging from Brokenwood, Bremerton and Qupe through to Kim Crawford and Vergelegen. Plenty of gift packs - such as a seasonal six pack rosé case (£36) and gift packs for Father’s Day, a smattering of spirits and some unusual beers completes the range.

Delivery is £7.50 per order regardless of size (up to a case) which is pretty much standard (and at cost). Personal service is vital to the success of the company shown through Chapman’s professional staff and attention to detail. Buy with confidence.

Surf4Wine/Andrew Chapman Fine Wines
Unit T2-27 & 28,
Milton Park,
Near Abingdon,
Oxfordshire OX14 4TA
United Kingdom

Ok so this is beer related, but I am sure many a wine lover also drinks a beer occassionally, as I do. CAMRA has just released new research showing that a shocking 26.6% of pints served in pubs are short measure by more than 5%. This is costing consumers a whopping £1.3 million every single day.

There is one pub I love to go to that really annoys me with short measures. I complained once and to say the barman was reluctant to provide a full measure is an understatement. His words were “They are always like that”!

CAMRA is taking its campaign for full pints straight to the top, by launching a national full pints petition addressed to the Prime Minister. Please add your name to our full pints petition at www.takeittothetop.co.uk.

I’m surprised though that they have launched their own petition rather than using the online one set up by No.10. Still tis better than nothing.

CAMRA has taken an advert in Monday 16th’s Guardian newspaper and another is planned for Friday 20th April. This is the first time in CAMRA’s history that they have placed campaign adverts in a national newspaper. Together we can put an end to short beer measures.

The Chiltern Valley Brewery and Vineyard, almost the closest vineyard to my home town of Henley, has been awarded a Royal Warrant of Appointment to the Queen - the first for an English vineyard.

The Warrant is given to only a few dozen businesses each year. Each has to have supplied the goods or services to the Royal Household for at least five consecutive years. The wines and beers of Chiltern are available in the Royal Farm shop in Windsor in addition to direct from the vineyard.

The company, based in Hambleden, was founded in 1980 on the site of an old pig farm.

An award winning merchant with a mighty fine range, well arrange in a spacious store. Although a few under £10 wines can be found, prices are generally above this level; so not a store for those use to supermarket ‘bargains’.

With awards such as Regional Wine Merchant of the Year and, in 2004, Independent Wine Merchant of the Year you should expect a top level of service and an interesting range to boot. The team don’t disappoint. Consumer wine tastings are a regular feature (both free and fee based) and a weekly email covering the latest additions and offers keeps everyone informed of events and specials.

An email today was requesting orders for bottles of fully mature port sourced from an Oxford college for example. Now this might sound elitist but the hushed tones and rarefied atmosphere, that I fine so off-putting and found in many of the top independent merchants, just doesn’t exist here. Sadly the website is a little lacking - there is no online ordering, no fully searchable list just a PDF download. At least this seems to be kept up-to-date with correct prices (others take note!).

The range is world encompassing but strengths include the Rhône, Burgundy, Australia and South Africa with good coverage of New Zealand and America. A smattering of interesting beers and various spirits complete the package. Wine recommendations can be viewed on Spittoon.

The Flying Corkscrew
Leighton Buzzard Road
Water End
Hertfordshire
HP1 3BD
telephone: 01442 412311
fax: 01442 412313

It is a bit old-fashioned looking and really the preserve of the ale-geek but the Oxford Bottled Beer Database is a treasure. As the name suggests it is full of beer tasting notes and ratings mostly submitted by users.

Spot a brew you haven’t supped before? Then head to the OBBD for details.

What is also rather decent of the young fellows who run the site is the occassional discounts they negociate with various beer retailers in the UK. The lastest such offer is 5% off the Christmas Selection Box from Living Beer.com.

This is a mixed case of 12 different ales with a seasonal theme. All the ales are bottle conditioned and from the UK, many from small microbreweries that might otherwise be difficult to get hold of. You can claim your 5% discount by going to www.livingbeer.com, purchasing the case and quoting the promotional code OBBDCSB-5 when you get to the checkout.

The box contains such delights as A Lump Of Coal, Reindeer’s Delight and Good King Senseless. An excellent gift.