I May Not Know Much... by Jo Eames

I May Not Know Much...

Martell star blog prize winner: July/August 2011

The magazines that slither through our letterbox at home are a motley mix: The Garden, The Economist, Imbibe, Elle Decoration, Decanter, The Caterer & (once a quarter, like a guest publication on HIGNFY) The Croquet Gazette. Not mine, that one, but a memento of Hamish’s brief shining career as a bandit on the national croquet scene fifteen years ago.

They don’t have much in common, unless it’s that none of them is generally a load of laughs. Except this month I did find myself giggling helplessly at a piece in Decanter that really belonged in Craig Brown’s Diary in Private Eye. It was Michael Broadbent’s column where (in the bemused tone of a judge encountering Twitter) he recounted some delightful recent discoveries he’d made. Normally, I read his perambulations about the upper echelons of the wine world as a peasant peers through the rich man’s window - assuming that his purview must be as deep and broad as it is high.

Having spent barely ten years educating myself in a certain corner of the wine trade (that is, the wines that suit gastropubs) it was first a shock, and then deliciously amusing to find that maybe, just maybe, that’s an area I now know a bit more about than one of the grand old men. Starting his column with the admission that he has never been “a pub man” Broadbent went on to recount a certain weakening of his life-long prejudice and to describe a couple of the wines he’d recently tasted in his local gastropub.

The first was a rare curiosity called Picpoul de Pinet, which he was forced to consult Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine about, as he had only the vaguest recollection that Picpoul was a grape variety. Then he generously awarded 4 stars to an excellent value Monbazillac. Both encountered with a sort of gentle surprise that such palatable offerings could be found in a pub.

Well, Michael, Picpoul de Pinet may not have troubled your radar, but it’s something I’ve had a soft spot for since drinking it beside the Canal du Midi twenty years ago and we’ve been listing it successfully every Summer for the last few years. Offered by the glass as a special last year we sold over 1,200 bottles in a month. And we’ve also listed that very Monbazillac several times. Other curiosities that are now hailed as old friends by our guests are a Fiano/Greco blend from A Mano in Puglia and a versatile, full-bodied red from Massaya in Lebanon. Such is the range on offer at the sort of pubs that really care about offering decent quality, interesting food and wine at reasonable prices.

My latest challenges are to turn our guests on to the delights of a Douro white from Christian Seeley’s estate, Quinta da Romaneira, and to see if there is any appetite for rehabilitating Muscadet as a popular drink. Each of my three wine suppliers (including the one selling it!) scoffed long and hard when I said I was going to give Muscadet a run for Summer, quipping about the return of prawn cocktails and Black Forest gateau to go with it. But it’s a well-made wine – the first Muscadet I’ve ever met that I actually liked – and four weeks into the Summer list it’s selling just as well as the other new kid on the block, a Marlborough Pinot Gris.

I expect next month Michael Broadbent will be back amongst the first growths and I’ll be a gawping peasant once again. But it was nice to be on terms for a moment.

1 comment

Garry C. 02-06-2011

Good for you championing the cause of muscadet again. I myself am about to put a muscadet on by the glass and it is meeting with some resistance by the boss. But Ive had it on this month by the carafe for the tasting menu and it has gone down a treat.

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