The Hide Bar - Newsletter

Number 14, April 2008

It’s April already; a quarter of the way through the year, with lighter evenings and even a hint of spring in the air (or perhaps I’m just being a little optimistic). From the points of view of bartenders, this marks the no-man’s-land between a winter of hot cocktails, hefty reds & stout and the spring of rosé, Bellinis and pale ales. Personally I’d recommend our Turkey Flat white (a blend of Marsanne & Viognier) – lots of structure and character in a lovely soft white, the Peachy Canyon Incredible Red Zinfandel, vibrant, racy red fruit, as well as classic champagne cocktails and fizzes (the Distiller’s Silver Fizz with Gordon’s Distiller’s Cut, Elderflower Fizz with St. Germain liqueur or the Sloe Gin fizz are all firm favourites at the moment). In practice, you’re obviously welcome to whatever takes your fancy. We’ve been quite surprised by the amount of rosé we’re selling at the moment – perhaps we ought to turn the heating down a little…

We have some great tastings this month, culminating in a special whisky tasting with Eddie from The Whisky Lounge that’s definitely not to be missed. Personally I’m really looking forward to the sticky wine tasting on the 1 st, but that’s a personal preference and just gives me an excuse to open a few nice bottles! It has also given me a subject for the random part at the end of this newsletter, so have a read if you get a moment, then come and try some on us.

Hope to see you soon.

 Cheers!
Paul

EVENTS

Tuesday tastings : Last roughly an hour and include random facts, helpful hints and a little bit of tasting. They are often free to attend, but booking is advisable.

Tuesday the 1st April, 7pm
Sweet wines. I’ll be showing six great sweet wines from Sauternes and Banyuls through to Vinsanto via South Africa and Australia. A great chance to try some very different styles and some pretty unusual things. We’ll also have 10% off all of our stickies for the evening if you want to carry on with them afterwards and heighten your sugar rushes!

Tuesday the 8th April, 7pm
North American wines. A selection of some great US wines, including ours from Cline & Peachy Canyon, as well as some other interesting bits and pieces.

Tuesday the 15th April, 7pm
Absinthe. Um, yes, absinthe. Should make for an interesting Tuesday (and possibly Wednesday). Different styles, ways of drinking and uses in cocktails, as well as a little bit about the history. For those of you who are of a nervous disposition, we will be encouraging methods for safely tasting, so hallucinations and bohemian aspirations aren’t essential.

Tuesday the 22nd April, 7pm
Meantime beer and Neal’s Yard Dairy cheese pairing. The chaps from Meantime have been chatting to the Neal’s Yard Dairy bunch and this event is one of the things that fell out. See what you think of some of their suggestions, or try your own from the samples available on the evening. To cover the costs, I’m afraid we’ll be charging £5 a head, payable on the evening.

Tuesday the 29th April, 7pm
Eddie Ludlow of The Whisky Lounge (www.thewhiskylounge.com) w ill be holding a whisky tasting on the theme of Scotland Vs. Japan. Expect some rare and fascinating whiskies and a few surprises. This is a professional tasting, with tickets at £20 available from the bar in advance or on the night, or from The Whisky Lounge website. Whiskies will be tasted blind so you can form your own opinions, and then scored at the end of the evening. Places are more limited than normal to ensure you have enough space for the tasting, so please get in touch sooner rather than later.

Last bit - Sweet wines

In a rare efficiency drive, I thought I’d use some of the notes I’d been making for the sweet wine tasting on the 1 st April and expand on them a little here. What follows is a brief, but slightly meandering take on sweet wines. These include some of the most delicious, intense, rich and in some cases, expensive wines in the world.

Strictly speaking, there isn’t an all encompassing definition of sweet or dessert wines. Some are fortified, some are sweetened with the addition of sugar or concentrated grape juice ( chaptalization or Süssreserve respectively) , others can be naturally sweet, sun-dried, frozen, or dried by botrytis. However they are made, all are difficult to produce and as a result, quite a luxury. Fortunately they are best in small quantities and have a longer life than other wines, so the delights (and costs) can be drawn out a little!

Probably the most well known of the sweet wines are from Sauternes in Bordeaux. These wines are the product of a very specific climate which gives night-time mists and warm days, the perfect breeding ground for Botrytis cinerea or Nobel Rot. This fungus infects Sémillion, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle grapes, removing water from the fruit and turning them into unpalatable-looking rotten raisins. Unlike other moulds, this doesn’t impair the flavour and the concentrated juice is pressed softly but very firmly out of the grapes. The very small quantities of juice and painstaking collection of the infected berries by hand result in very low yields, maybe only enough for 1000 bottles from 100ha of vineyards. The resulting wine is sweet, but retains very high acid levels, giving an incredible perfume and richness.

Another very famous sweet wine, Tokaji Aszú, is the result of a similar process, and is thought to have been produced up to two centuries before Sauternes. In this case the grapes are mainly Furmint and Hárslevelú, the former is thin skinned and susceptible to infection by Botrytis, the latter has high sugar content and great flavours. The climate around Tokaj (the town in Hungary when the wine is produced) is in some ways similar to Sauternes, with evening mists and warm sun. The second s tage is more complex though, with the infected and clean grapes harvested at the same time, but kept separate. The fungal-dried raisins are kept in a heap until harvest is completed. Some of the juice drains from these and is kept as an incredibly thick, syrupy (and expensive) Eszencia. The berries are then added to a base wine made with the clean grapes and fermentation continues. Tokaji sweetness is measured on the Puttonyos scale – the number of units of the infected grapes that are added to the base wine. One of the sweetest is 6-puttonyos, with a level of 150g/l sugar.

The sugar in grapes can also be concentrated by drying. In the case of Vin Santo from Italy (and Greece), the grapes ( Trebbiano and Malvasia) are air-dried on straw mats in barns before being pressed and fermented in small barrels. This produces a dark, rich wine, traditionally drunk with almond biscuits in Italy. If you ask an Italian, you’ll probably hear that the name derives from the supposed healing qualities - vin santo or holy wine. If you’re Greek, it’s more likely to refer to a misspelling of Vin Xantos, referring to a wine produced in this way from Santorini. Either way, whether it comes from Italy or Greece, it is delicious (we have a Greek one to try at the tasting on the 1 st). Another Italian wine produced in the same way is Recioto, using Corvina grapes dried on straw mats in the breeze from Lake Garda.

Some grapes are naturally sweet, producing small berries with intense fruit. Muscat is the most widely used, but requires a lot of sun to gain this sugar. One of the most histo rically important Muscat wines is Vin de Constance from Cape Town. The Muscat de Frontignan on the Constantia estate was first planted in the late 1600s, and by the 18 th and 19 th Centuries, the wine was one of the most famous in the world. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Baudelaire all mention it, while Napoleon had it shipped to St Helena to help along his time in exile. After a few decades of silence, the Constantia Estates are now producing this amazing wines again – another of those that we’ll taste.

Muscat is also often fortified, as in Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise and Muscat de Rivesaltes. Here the fermentation of the grapes is halted by adding strong spirit (95% abv). As fermentation is halted early, there’s lots of residual sugar left. Being a slightly less elaborate process (producing sweet, but not necessarily very characterful wines) these are often a more affordable alternative to other dessert wines. Sherries also fall into this category of fortified wines, with the very sweet ones using the Pedro Ximénez grape. People are also experimenting with PX outside sherry, with an interesting example from Australia that we will taste on the 1 st.

To end my waffling sweetie lecture, we have ice-wines. All the techniques above (with the exception of the fortification) involve drying out the grapes, and the last is no exception. Below about -7 degrees centigrade, water in the grape pulp freezes, but leaves the concentrated sugars and solids in the pulp. If they are picked at exactly the right time and pressed at a similar temperature, the concentrated juice can be extracted and fermented to a sweet wine. Clearly there are certain factors that make this wine very expensive. Firstly the grapes must be left late into the season, so run the risk of being eaten or rotting. Secondly, yields are again very low. Most importantly, some poor bugger has to go out and hand-pick frozen grapes in the dead of night.

Sometimes the effort you know has gone into these wines just makes them taste all the sweeter!

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

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