Would you admit to liking demi-sec Champagne?

Have you ever tried demi-sec Champagne? If so, would you ever admit to liking the semi-sweet style? Champagne Jacquart’s chief winemaker Floriane Eznack doesn’t think so. Speaking to the drinks business at a tasting lunch at Chrysan in London last week, she told the magazine demi-sec has become the elephant in the room in Champagne.

“Our demi-sec sales are growing, but it’s the wine we don’t talk about. There’s still a prejudice surrounding the style. In the past people would add sugar to their Champagne to hide faults so it has a negative connotation. No one likes to talk about demi-sec in the region, but a lot of people like to drink it. The style isn’t going out of fashion, if anything it’s getting more popular,” she said.

Us Brits are notorious for having a sweet tooth and happily sing the praises of sweeter Sherry styles such as Oloroso, so why the hang up about demi-sec? There’s an implication that sweetness levels correspond to intellect, and the drier you like your wine the higher your intellect and more rapier-like your wit. Nonsense! Demi-sec has its place in both the Champagne arena and on the dinner table. It makes for a sensational food match with desserts like tarte tartan.

My taste tends to veer towards the drier end of the Champagne spectrum, but I’m staunchly against the idea of snobbery towards demi-sec for snobbery’s sake – it suffers the same prejudice as still rosé. Having spent a few glorious days in Provence this summer and witnessed first hand the time, care and attention top-end producers like Château d’Esclans and Domaines Ott put into their rosés, I find the narrow-mindedness of those who fail to take it seriously as a style hard to swallow.

All wine styles should be given a chance to prove themselves on their individual merits. As an aside, the aforementioned Eznack also revealed to db that sales of Jacquart rosé are booming in Japan due to the positive associations with the colour pink in the county. “Pink is a very important colour in Japan – it signals the coming of spring and cherry blossom, so our rosé sales have always been high there. I also think it pairs really well with Japanese cuisine, particularly sushi.”

South Africa: time to talk terroir

Terroir needs to be at the top of South Africa’s agenda according to one of the country’s leading Pinot Noir producers, Anthony Hamilton Russell, owner of Hamilton Russell Vineyards in Walker Bay. “South Africa needs to sort out its terroir message in order for it to be taken seriously as a fine wine producing country. It will help us promote our fine wine offering. The importance of terroir very much exists in South Africa, it just hasn’t been communicated properly yet,” Hamilton Russell told the drinks business at Cape Wine last month.

“Terroir is fundamental to the Pinots I produce. The stony, clay-rich soil in Hemel-en-Aarde helps us to get closer in style to Burgundy than any other New World country,” he said, admitting that it has been “tough” being a South African fine wine producer and trying to convince the world of the worth of the country’s top wines: “I’m proud everyone has persevered. If we were American our wines would be on allocation."

South Africa's premiere Pinot Noir region, Hemel-en-Aarde

Paul Cluver, managing director of Elgin-based Paul Cluver Wines, agrees that South Africa’s top end wines offer “outstanding” value. “You’d never find the same quality/price ratio in France or the US. We’re just suffering from a bit of an image problem. People are not willing to pay more than around £20 for South African wine at the moment. We need to shift our focus to our premium offering and market ourselves better,” Cluver said.

Hamilton Russell’s Walker Bay neighbour Peter Finlayson, owner of top Pinot producer Bouchard Finlayson, agrees that South can get closest to Burgundy in terms of tannin content. “Our best Pinots are well structured, with good tannins and good extraction. There are no vacumes in the wine business. I’m seeing a lot of newcomers to Pinot Noir trying to capitalise on the favourable returns it affords,” he said.

Finlayson believes the challenge for South Africa moving forward is to look at terroir specification. “We need to streamline our efforts and focus on making wines with a sense of place. I’d like to see the terroir approach really take hold across the Cape. I’m starting to see it happen,” he said. Thys Lombard, sales and marketing manager of Tokara meanwhile, believes the key to success in the fine wine sphere lies in pricing the wines down slightly, so they remain exceptional value.

“South African fine wines are starting to enter the market at the price they are supposed to be. We got complacent, but we’ve lost our arrogance and become critical of ourselves, which is healthy. We’ve gone back to the drawing board. It’s a good thing that our best wines are not priced too highly. We’re aiming for the top of course, but I’m happy for us to be thriving in the middle at the moment.”

Wine writer Michael Fridjhon agrees that rather than trying to dominate the top tier, South African can carve out a niche at £10-£20. “I’m not sure the future of South African fine wine lies with icon wines. The £10-20 bracket is where we should be ploughing our furrows."

Bordeaux Wines dinner with The London Foodie

In our ever-experimental age, food and wine pairings are becoming increasingly daring. Gone are the days of sticking rigidly to lazy, hackneyed alliances, like white wine and fish, or Port and blue cheese. The doors of opportunity have been flung open and all sorts of strange combinations are popping up – London foodies and winos have been howling with delight for hotdogs and grower Champagne at James Knappett and Sandia Chang's charmingly irreverent Bubbledogs. 

To illustrate that Bordeaux needn't be relegated to meat-heavy main courses, the ever dapper London Foodie Luiz Hara invited a ravenous bunch of food and wine hacks into his cosy East London home for a five-course Japanese feast, enlisting the help of glamourous wine glugger Christina Pickard to pair each of the dishes with a different Bordeaux wine, from white, to rosé, to red, to sweet. I've been lucky enough to eat at many of London's most hotly-anticipated new openings in the past few years and can honestly say that Luiz' food could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of them.

Thoughtfully presented and elegantly scented, his dishes were meticulously executed and full of flavour. Among the highlights was the opening plate of salmon sashimi served with an American twist in the form of wasabi infused soured cream, though the dish that will linger longingly in the mind is the Woody Allen-esque Deconstructing Sushi, formed of grilled scallops, Tobiko eggs, spicy sauce and sushi rice – a composition of such richness, creaminess and alluring beauty, I was tempted to steal my neighbour's shell and suck out the goodness.

As for the wines, while the Réserve de Sours Sparking Rosé NV proved a curiously delightful pairing for the popcorn flavoured with Japanese Seven Spices doing the rounds in Luiz' living room before we ventured down to the kitchen, the standout wine was the creamy, unctuous and beautifully textured Château Roquefort Blanc Roquefortissime 2008 – sounds like a cheese, tasted sensational, and a steal at just £12.99 from Waitrose – I'm debating buying the entire allocation at my local Chiswick branch and I'm not even a Sauvignon girl. The toasty, spicy, apricot-laced Ginestet Sauternes 2009 also pleased the crowd, especially when enjoyed with decadent dark chocolate cake.

Huddled around a table of die hard gastronauts, conversation inevitably turned to food, and soon after, a competition to see who could come up with the wittiest food-related film puns. Many a suggestion was thrown into the ring, from There's Something About Dairy to Silence of the Clams. In my finest hour, I offered Beef Encounter and The Prawn Supremacy. Leaving Luiz' replete and happy, the memory of the Roquefortissime endured. Bordeaux whites are largely under the radar, though there are many gems to be unearthed displaying the holy trinity of Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and judiciously judged oak.

86 review

Eighty-Six is the kind of restaurant where you’d expect to find the cast of Made in Chelsea knocking back Martinis, nibbling on a Cesar salad and bitching about their love rivals on a Wednesday night.

So suited is it to the manicured, perma-tanned, braying bunch, that it has featured in various episodes of the “structured” reality TV show as a setting for the cast’s catty confrontations and cocktail-swilling debauchery.

The restaurant, which opened in its current guise in November 2010, is set in a converted, three-story Georgian townhouse at number 86 Fulham Road; a space once occupied by the somewhat less salubrious Cactus Blue on a stretch of the Fulham Road known as The Beach, due to the toned, tanned denizens seen sashaying up and down it in Twenty8Twelve dresses, beige Chihuahuas named Fluffy and Coco peeping out of their “amaze” Louis Vuitton totes.

Founded by posh party boys George Adams and Charlie Kearns, who cut their teeth at tiki nightclub Kukui in Oxford and the Coco Club in Swiss ski resort Verbier, affectionately known as Fulham-sur-neige, Eighty-Six initially lassoed Mark Broadbent of Bluebird fame as head chef, though Frenchman Simon Levy, previously of Koffmann’s at The Berkeley, has since taken over the reins, giving the menu a decidedly French kiss. Stylish modern European food is the order of the day, ticking trend boxes from foraging to retro classics en route.

Venison carpaccio

Despite its somewhat frivolous location, the owners are serious about serving well thought out dishes made with fresh, seasonal ingredients. Prettified by designLSM, the team behind the breathtakingly beautiful Galvin La Chapelle, the three-tiered venue begins with a well-stocked, dimly-lit bar on the ground floor.

An industrial spiral staircase leads to a lounge area filled with framed pictures of besuited, bushy-tailed, tweed-clad badgers, foxes and ferrets, while on the top floor, the gold-panelled restaurant filled with Hollywood flash bulbs is crowned by a mirrored ceiling – add pink Champagne on ice and you have an Eagles hit, and more gold than Michael Phelps’ medal cabinet.

Our buff, bronzed waiter, Cedric Martinez, with glinting brown eyes, raven hair, immaculately clipped stubble and abs you could grate white truffles on, is fresh from LA, having recently caused controversy in reality TV show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Striking up a conversation about the besuited animals adorning the walls, Cedric reveals he used to have a ferret called Tequila. My six-foot-seven Finnish dining companion and I begin our meal with an amuse bouche of herb-flecked goat’s cheese on a supermodel-thin bruschetta served with a seasonal strawberry puree. Kudos to the chef for the addition of strawberry, which added welcome sweetness to the salty cheese.

Veal chop

A starter of venison carpaccio, truffle oil, pea shoots and parsnip crisps is indecently moreish, the ruby red, razor-thin slithers of meat umami rich and silky on the palate, enhanced by the crunch of the parsnips and lifted by the earthy aromatics of the salad – like diving into a freshly rained on vegetable patch with a knife and fork.

A sweet and meaty second starter of foie gras, duck rillette and blood orange marmalade teased the taste buds, the audacious addition of marmalade freshening the intensely rich and velvety foie gras, adding zip, zing and citrus zest to the dish, which featured a rogue fold of uninvited ham, while adroitly cutting through the fat.

The wine list is small and perfectly formed, featuring the likes of exciting English white Chapel Down Bacchus, and a selection of Bordeaux classed growths from the notoriously tannic 1986 vintage, including Château Mouton-Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Pichon Lalande, Cos d’Estournel and Leoville Barton.

Mark-ups on the majority of the wines are incredibly fair. I opt for a £38 bottle of the bright, fruit forward Koura Bay Blue Duck Pinot Noir 2010 from the Awatere Valley in Marlborough, New Zealand, which had a lobster rather than a duck on the label and delivered a dense, vibrant, black cherry-filled mouthful, with hints of Oriental spices, licks of salt and a liquorice finish.

Koura Bay Blue Duck Pinot Noir

My main – a swan-white hunk of pan-seared halibut, arrived atop scallop and crab ravioli in a white wine sauce. Though beautifully cooked, I develop food envy at the sight of my companion’s Herculean veal chop glinting in the half-light, its delightfully juicy interior, the colour of a flushed cheek, melting in the mouth.

The accompanying, chunky, chicken salt fat chips are exemplary – crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Green-eyed, I order a bowl of my own while nibbling on a modest but sensational side of sesame-doused Asian veg.

Room must be made for pudding – or, more specifically, for the Brandy apple tart drizzled with vanilla anglaise fashioned into exquisite folds of feather-light pastry that shatters like glass with a delicate tap of the spoon, revealing a base filled with warm toffee sauce so comforting, I’m tempted to ask Cedric for a blanket and a bedtime story.

Instead, he brings me a small glass filled with the golden elixir that is Château Giraud Sauternes 2008, which rewards with a honeysuckle nose and a dried apricot, acacia and peach palate.

Brandy apple tart

At times appearing like a nightclub masquerading as a restaurant, the funky house soundtrack is unapologetically loud, though perhaps this is a thoughtful touch, so the beautiful people merely have to pout and pose in their beloved’s direction rather than converse.

In an apt twist of fate, on my way out I clock Richard Dinan from Made in Chelsea cross-legged at an outdoor table, loafing in suede loafers with a trio of perfectly preened friends. Masked by a mop of blond hair, I glance in his direction and he seems pleased at the recognition, almost as if he’d parked himself by the entrance in a deliberate bid to get laid in Chelsea.

Eighty-Six, 86 Fulham Road, London, SW3 6HR; Tel: +44 (0)20 7052 9620

Brad Pitt to serve own rosé wine at wedding

Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt is to serve one of his own wines at his wedding to actress Angelina Jolie this September, db.com reports. Among the wines hand-picked by Pitt for the reception will be Provençal rosé Pink Floyd, produced at Pitt and Jolie’s Château Miraval in Côtes de Provence, which dates from pre-Roman times.

The wine is so named as rock band Pink Floyd recorded part of their iconic album The Wall at the château, and reportedly became fond of the pink drop during their stay. The estate was home to Studio Miraval in the ‘70s, created by Jazz pianist Jacques Loussier, where everyone from Sting and Sade to The Cranberries came to record music.

The regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne will also feature in the wedding wine line-up, along with one wine from Germany. A source told The Sun: “Brad’s cellar boasts some incredibly rare wines and rivals those of some of the best connoisseurs in Europe. He’s always had a keen interest in wine and did his wine steward’s course this year.”

The Oxford Wine Company website describes the 2011 vintage of Pink Floyd as “a complex rosé with red berry, strawberry and red cherry fruit underpinned by crisp minerality and tight structure. The 13.5% wine, a blend of old vine Cinsault and Grenache, is bottled under cork.

Château Miraval is set among 400 hectares of land, 75 of which are planted with vines on a mixture of clay and chalk soil. In addition to Pink Floyd, the estate produces a white made from Rolle and a red made from Syrah, Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon. The château has certified organic vineyards in Côtes de Provence and Côteaux Varois.

Pitt and Jolie plan to tie the knot in September with only close family and friends present. Pitt has been left to do the majority of the wedding planning. In May, it was reported that Brad Pitt is to star in the film adaptation of The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a book by Benjamin Wallace on the fake Thomas Jefferson bottles affair.  

Wasps: a wine lover’s best friend?

Though seeming to cause nothing but annoyance to unassuming innocent bystanders, researchers from Yale University have discovered that wasps and hornets carry the yeast responsible for the fermentation of wine, beer and bread. As reported on db.com, the study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, found that the yeast can live in the gut of the wasp while it hibernates during winter.

When wasps bite into grapes on the vine, they leave traces of the yeast, known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, behind, which helps start the fermentation process. The researchers used DNA sequencing to analyse the genes of the yeast, tracing them back to the wasp gut. Other insects also carry the yeast, but wasps play a special role as they harbor the yeast during winter and can pass it on to their offspring.

The study found that wasps also introduce other microorganisms to the grapes, which add flavours to the wine. According to Duccio Cavalieri, professor of microbiology at the University of Florence and one of the authors of the study, wine would not taste the same without the yeast left behind. "Wasps are a wine lover’s best friend," said Cavalieri, who comes from a winemaking family in Chianti.

"The study shows it is crucial to look at conservation and the study of biodiversity – everything is linked,” he added. Ancient Romans seem to have known about the role insects play in the winemaking process. They would often plant gardens next to their vineyards to lure wasps and other grape-loving insects to the vines.