I adore dessert wines. The syrupy liquid nectar is too sweet for some, but I truly love the intensity of flavour that the best dessert wines bring to the glass. Some of my favourites are produced by noble rot, the action of Botrytis cinerea, a fungal mould that causes infected grapes to partially shrivel, raisin-like, ... Read more »
If you’ve not already checked out this year’s Christmas Gift Guide, do have a browse. In the meantime, enjoy my 2015 picks of alcoholic treats. Earlier this year I enjoyed the most wonderful press trip to Canada which included a food and drink tour of Niagara-on-the-Lake. We visited several vineyards, one of which was Inniskillin, ... Read more »
When you’re married to a beer lover, the beer menu can be just as important as the food menu, and it’s good to have a few places up the sleeve that will tempt said beer lover into town! Handily, The Three Johns in Angel is easy to get to – just a couple of minutes’ ... Read more »
This lovely Vin d’Orange recipe comes from Wild Drinks & Cocktails: Handcrafted Squashes, Shrubs, Switchels, Tonics, and Infusions to Mix at Home by Emily Han, and is best to make during winter, when citrus fruits are at their best, ready to enjoy through the next spring or summer. Read more about Wild Drinks and Cocktails ... Read more »
One of my food and drink goals in recent years (and certainly for the next few too) is to learn more about sake. Not just how it’s made (which I understand pretty well now) and the different categories of sake (which I finally have downpat) but – most importantly of all – working out what ... Read more »
Green smoothies are all the rage. But I’ve just not developed a taste for kale, spinach, broccoli or any other green vegetable in my smoothies and prefer to stick to my fruit concoctions. A banana is a great start to the day. In recent years, bananas have received some bad press because they do not ... Read more »
In the last few years I’ve discovered that I have a taste for sake. I’ve learned the basics about how it’s made and the different types available, but haven’t sampled enough to get a handle on my preferences. There’s a very distinctive taste that most sakes have in common, despite their many differences and it’s ... Read more »
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Matcha Masterclass by Jameel Lalani, founder of Lalani & Co. Not long before, I wrote an article about matcha for which I spoke to several retailers of high grade Matcha, Lalani & Co included. (Look out for the article in the March issue of ... Read more »
Have you heard of supertasters? To my eternal regret, I have, because I’m one of them. The label makes being a supertaster sound exciting, suggestive of a superior palate. The truth of the matter is that a supertaster is simply someone who “experiences the sense of taste with far greater intensity than average”. Yes, that ... Read more »
I don’t order bottled water in restaurants. We are fortunate enough to live in a country with safe, clean and reasonably plentiful drinking water. It strikes me as crazy to pay (financially and environmentally) to drink bottled water instead. There’s an argument for those who prefer carbonated, in which case buying fizzy bottled water is ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]