Wine and Cheese

Shopping for wine in London ought to offer a cornucopia of choices and a huge range of wines from the empire (Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia) to Europe (Italy, etc.)  In fact, there are relatively few retail shops in our Bloomsbury neighborhood.  According to the press, local retailers are being squeezed by the big grocery chains, like Waitrose and Sainsburys.   In particular, Oddbins, which began as a kind of quirky antepodal shop trading on their choices of a few unusual wines, is in receivership, and a few of the shops around us are closing down. Another chain, Nicolas, features French wines, but there are none close to us.  Our closest Oddbins on Southampton Row has a very limited range of wines.  There is a larger scale shop, Majestic Wines, further away, but they sell only in quantities of 6 bottles or more, with the ambience of Binny's Beverage Mart in Chicago.  Our wine consumption has been limited by the number of bottles we can carry from Waitrose in a day's shopping.  Their selection is broader than at Oddbins, but not as broad or interesting as our own Corkscrew in Urbana.
Enter HG Wines, the wine purveyor associated with St John Restaurant. They specialize in finding out small scale producers of interesting French wines that they can make available at their restaurants for reasonable prices.  We have now purchased two shipments of wine from them: they too require a minimum of a case for free delivery, but the wines are interesting and well chosen by people we should be able to trust.   Here is our most recent assortment (chablis, muscadet, a couple of no-name reds, and the Roussillon we enjoyed at R's birthday dinner.)

Also for the birthday celebration was a cheese tasting at Neal's Yard Dairy.  We signed up for "A Vintage Every Day: Variations in Handmade Cheese."  The tastings are held in the evening at the Borough Market location (in fact, in the "tutor's" apartment, above the shop), and include a basic introduction to the hows of cheese-making in Britain.  We were fortunate in that the regular tasting guy, Chris George, on his way to New York, and his replacement, James Rutter, were both on hand to provide anecdotes (shooting cheese*) and instruction.  There were just a few of us at this tasting ("because it sounded too academic, unlike 'beer and cheese'") so we got to ask lots of questions.  Here is our cheese plate:

Clockwise, from high noon:
Perroche (made by Charlie Westhead. Pasteurised. Goats milk. Vegetable rennet.) Very fresh. Great.
Golden Cross (made by Mary Holbrook at Sleight Farm near Bath. Unpasteurised. Goats milk. Animal rennet.) Greater.
Innes Log (made by Joe and Stella Bennet at Highfields Farm, Staffordshire. Unpasteurised. Goats milk. Animal rennet.) Greatest. (Lucky we had bought our own log a couple of days before.)
Gubbeen (made by Tom and Gina Ferguson near Schull,  Co. Cork, Ireland. Unpasteurised cows milk. Animal rennet.) Soft and interesting rind, but...
St Tola (made by Siobhan Ni Ghairbith near Inah, Co. Claire, Ireland. Unpasteurised Goats milk. Animal rennet.  Also interesting introduction to "terroir" in cheese.
Denhay Farmhouse cheddar (made by Mike Reave at Denhay Farms, Broadoak, Dorset. Pasteurised. Cows milk. Vegetable rennet. [purchased at Waitrose - not available at Neal's Yard]  Not very good.
Montgomery's Cheddar (made by James "Jamie" Montgomery at Manor Farm near Cadbury, Somerset. Unpasteurised. Cows Milk. Animal Rennet). Our favorite, then and now.
Long Clawson Stilton (made at Long Clawson Dairy, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Pasteurised Cows Milk. Vegetable rennet).  Ugh.
Colston Bassett Stilton (made by Richard Rowlett and Billy Kevan at Colston Bassett District Dairy. Nottinghamshire. Pasteurised. Cows Milk. Vegetable rennet) Creamy, rich, flavorsome.
Stichelton (made by Joe Schneider and Team at Collingthwaite Farm, Nottinghamshire. Unpasteurised, Cows milke, Animal Rennet.)  One of us felt this was not as good as the Stilton or as previous tastings of Stichelton. But pretty good all the same.

Wines were provided by Laithwaite's at Vinopolis, another firm that seems to seek out unusual and small producers.  They included La Fontaine Aux Enfants, a pinot blanc from Alsace (2008), and La Font del Bosc, a fortified wine bottled at Chai au Quai, Maury, 2005.  Both very good with cheese. Red wine with cheese -- most experts say not to do it.

What we learned:  animal rennet and unpasteurised milk are superior.  But the big chains need to use vegetable rennet (some of which comes from cardoon thistles!) for their least common denominators.  We learned about different molds and bacterias that are applied to the cheeses to produce the crust that helps to ripen them.  We learned that each batch of cheese, even from the "bigger" producers like Montgomerys, is different. In this case, Jamie must use three different starters on successive days to keep from inbreeding, and some starters are better than others. So always taste before you buy.  We learned that making goat cheese is easier because the maturation period is short enough to be able to adjust the ingredients along the way.  With an 18 month cheddar, it's more like turning an oil tanker at sea.

*Shooting cheese. A certain proportion of the cheddars are not edible at all, so they are saved, and then the cheesemaker and friends hoist them up and shoot them with their shotguns at holidays. "Pull!"

And unfortunately, Neal's Yard saves its best cheeses for local sales, so even though you can buy Montgomery's and Stichelton at Whole Foods Chicago (and elsewhere), it is not the same as buying in Covent Garden. So we need to gather our rosebuds while we may.