The Hide Bar Newsletter

The Hide Bar - Newsletter

Number 19, September 2008

September, the 7th month in the Roman calendar, is also the start of the academic year. As such, I thought I'd pass on some academic notes of importance for the month. Obviously drink-related.

As I've just got back from Germany, the first September fact that springs to mind is that it marks the start of Oktoberfest. A little odd, but there you have it. This means we're going to have a beer special for the month. We'll get a case of something you've hopefully never tried before, sell it, then get another one. The faster we sell them, the more you'll get to try! We'll keep a tally of how many different beers we've got through and even put the most popular on the drinks list. We'll get things from all over the world as we can't let the Germans have all the fun, so let us know if you have a favourite beer we need to try.

Secondly, the 16th September is Mexican Independence Day. That's got to be a great excuse to drink tequila, so we're doing a special with Don Augustin Reposado. We've got some very endearing 20cl bottles of this delicious estate-grown tequila, rested for 9 months in American oak. We're serving them with dark chocolate, limes and sangrita on the side so you can choose how you sip. 20cl for only a touch more money than 4 doubles of our (also excellent) house, Ocho.

Thirdly, the 15th September (third Monday) is the Japanese 'Respect for the Aged' day (敬老の日). To celebrate in style, we've made all our Japanese aged whiskies 10% cheaper! The perfect time to try the 21 year old Nikka Taketsuru, 'The World's Best Blended Whisky' as proclaimed by the World Whiskies Awards in 2007. We have one bottle. It's unlikely we'll be able to get another for a long while as it sold out almost everywhere in the world after that award.

Fourthly, the Battle of Brandywine was fought on September 11th 1777 in Pennsylvania as part of the Revolutionary War. It's not really that relevant, but I liked the name...

Lastly, September is the traditional time for bars to launch their Christmas menus! After all, these things take some planning, so we've put together our Christmas menus and booking details. They'll be up on our website in the very near future (if not already by the time you're reading this). From sit-down Christmas dinner for 25, to cocktail parties for 120 or a champagne breakfast for 40, we're ready to help you plan things. Please see our Christmas Page for more information.

Cheers!

Paul

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EVENTS

Saturday September 13th, Bermondsey Street Festival (afternoon)
Not at The Hide, but less than 2 minutes walk away at Tanner Street Park, the second Bermondsey Street Festival starts at midday on Saturday the 13th.
As well as us selling Bermondsey Gin punches and Meantime beers, there will be food and drink from other local establishments, fashion, craft stalls, a dog show and fashion show. Fingers crossed the weather is good! See www.bermondseyvillage.org.uk for more information.

Tuesday tastings
Last roughly an hour to and hour and a half and include random facts, helpful hints and a little bit of tasting. They are often free to attend, but booking is advisable as we're limited to about 25 people in our back room.

    Tuesday the 2nd September, 7.30pm - English Wines
English wines have had a lot of good press in the last 10 years, but we're all still a little cautious when trying them. So why not try them on us and see what you think? You might find your new favourite wine, or you might decide to buy a bottle of Kiwi Sauvignon as soon as we're done. Either way, it's fun to try!

    Tuesday the 9th September, 7.30pm - Mentzendorff Kummel
Kummel is The Hide's shot of choice when we need a pick-me-up (ok, tequila may just edge it - depends on the occasion!). A great digestive and a pretty good cocktail ingredient, this sweet caraway liqueur-spirit dates back to the 1500s and has been produced at the Combier distillery in France, dating back to 1834. As well as tasting neat (frozen) with Amanda from Mentzendorff, we'll be making some classic and new cocktails.

    Tuesday the 16th September, 7.30pm - Meantime beer & Sausage matching
You probably know all about the beers we get from Meantime now, but do you know how well they go with sausages? We've just started getting some fantastic sausages from the Franconian Sausage Company round the corner from the bar, and we'll have a great assortment to taste, with different sausages complementing different beers (or vice versa?). Meantime chaps will be here in person to make sure you enjoy everything. This one is £10 to cover food and drinks, payable on the night.

    Tuesday the 23rd September, 7.30pm - Old-Fashioned masterclass
The Old Fashioned dates back to at least the 1880s when it was The drink of the Pendennis Club in Kentucky. One of the first drinks to be called a cocktail, it is one of the best ways of drinking bourbon or rye. Like the martini there are lots of variations and styles; the choice of spirit being particularly important. We'll talk you through some of the options and make some of our favourites.

    Tuesday the 30th September, 7.30pm - New World Vs Old World Wine tasting
One of our knowledgeable wine suppliers, Ginny, will be showing two pairs of whites and two pairs of reds, New World vs Old World. We've been promised two Sauvignons, two Pinot Grigios, two Rhone-style Syrah blends and two Bordeaux (Left Bank) Cabernet blends. This should be a really good tasting with some lovely wines, but due to the number of wines and quality, it will be £10 a head.

Tuesday 16th September, 6.30pm WSET rare whisky tasting
Not at The Hide, but at our Landlords, The Wine and Spirit Education Trust. If you're interested, Richard Paterson, Master Blender at Whyte and Mackay will be showing whiskies including the 1974 Dalmore and 1974 Jura (£600 each a bottle), a 40 year old Whyte & Mackay blend and the 40 year old Dalmore (£1350 a bottle!) amongst others. Tickets are £75 each, available from WSET at www.wset.co.uk. You can then come to us for beer and sausages!

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LAST BIT - English Wines

As I was preparing for one of our tastings this month, I thought I'd share some notes about English wines.

Firstly a bit of emphasis, English wines are English. From grapes grown in England. British wines on the other hand, are invariably made from concentrated grape juice imported from the continent in bulk. English wines are made by small producers in relatively small quantities, by people who care about wines. British wines are (for the most part) made in large quantities as cheaply as possible. Confusing and unhelpful I know, but at the moment that's as far as the UK's wine naming system has got!

The English wine industry is quite young in many ways. We only started producing wines again in the 1950s (the first vines being planted at Hambledon in Hampshire by Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones in 1952) and are still in the process of finding out what grows well and what we're best at. I say 'again' in that sentence as up until 1918, wines were being produced in England as far back as the 11th Century and possibly even to Roman times. The Doomsday Book records 46 vineyards for example. Now there are 362 registered vineyards, producing 3.3 million bottles a year. While this may sound a lot, it puts us at around 63rd place in the list of wine-producing countries by volume (UN FAO, 2005), below the likes of Cuba, Madagascar and Zimbabwe and just above Malta, and accounts for only 1% of wine sales in the UK.

When the industry was reigniting, a lot of research was done into which grape varieties would work best in the UK's climate. Clearly we don't have the sun of California or Italy, so light-loving varieties are out. Those that initially worked best were the Northern-French and particularly German varieties, including Seyval Blanc, Riesling, Muller-Thurgau, Silvaner and a cross between the last three called Bacchus (named after the Roman name for Dionysus, the god of wine). They tend to produce quite acidic, aromatic, tart and crisp whites. More recently, chardonnay and pinot noir have been planted to cater for our love of known varietals and the results have been exceedingly good.

Conveniently, pinot noir and chardonnay happen to be the main grapes used in the production of Champagne, and what with similar chalky soils in England (the South Downs are part of the same geological formation as those in Champagne), the English 'Traditional Method' sparkling wine production is going from strength to strength. Their awards include one of the top ten sparking wines in the Effervescentes du Monde competition 2007 (Theale Valley Sparkling Chardonnay 2007), the only gold medal for a sparking wine from outside Champagne at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) 2005 (Camel Valley Brut 'Cornwall'), Gold at the IWC 2007 (Denbies Greenfields 2003), International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) 2006 Gold (Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 1998) and IWSC 2005 Gold (Ridgeview Merret Bloomsbury 2002). Not a bad haul!

Still wines are also coming up through the ranks, and are looking to improve each year with rising temperatures in the UK. Sharpham, Camel Valley, Chapel Down, Denbies and Three Choirs all have a host of awards to their name and are a great place to start your English wine education.

Sadly, due to the costs of production and taxation in the UK, English wine is expensive. This means the industry has had to focus on producing very high quality in order to justify the prices or risk its reputation. The result has been some very good wine indeed, as shown by the many success of English wines in international blind tastings. These awards are as good a place as any to start your quest for great English wines.

Happy experimenting and drinking!

For more information and where to buy, you could try www.bestenglishwine.co.uk and www.english-wine.com as places with lots more information and a host of other links, including lists of all the UK producers. The former also sells on-line. If you like your statistics, DEFRA offers you lots here: www.defra.gov.uk/foodrin/wine/industry.htm

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OTHER STUFF
Our back room is available for hire, and we’d love to hold tailored wine tastings or cocktail classes. Just get in touch and let us know what you’d like to do. We now have a price list of some of our more popular tastings, available from the website at www.thehidebar.com/parties.htm.

Likewise please get in touch if you have any comments and suggestions, please email everyone@thehidebar.com. You can also sign up to keep in touch at ‘people who like to drink at The Hide Bar’ on Facebook.

The Hide
39-45 Bermondsey Street , London . SE1 3XF
t: 0207 403 6655; f: 0207 117 4173
www.thehidebar.com; everyone@thehidebar.com

Denbies in Dorking, Surrey