By James Martin
A healthy catch
Day one – Mistral Maze
Full of anticipation for the much talked about truffle hunting trip, courtesy of Cave Terraventoux, three Bibendumites and five of our guests arrived by plane into Nimes airport. Well, just about, as the infamous Mistral gave the plane a once over as we descended in, followed by the …
By Ben Turner
Ben rocks it
Working in the Marketing Department often leads to being tasked with many a weird and wonderful request. Though none quite as random as when being told to go and record a track to compliment this year’s Annual Tasting so Bibendum can post the highlights online.
There was a rumour I’d recently started a band, Imya, but we …
By Gareth Groves
Monday Night Comfort
We all have a Monday Night Tea Dish. It’s the meal we cook most often, probably once a week. Something to make that is cheap and relatively healthy after the weekend. Something to eat that is warm and comforting but doesn’t take a long time to prepare. A familiar and easy meal for when we …
By Miles Platt
Like many industries where the suit is often too formal for the average day, the wine trade demands a certain level of smart casual attire for the male salesman that says “I’m professional and respectful but not stuffy and even a little stylish”. Not that that much thought is usually involved. In some ways, the modern wine rep’s uniform is very similar …
By Omar Raafat
Calera vineyards
Part 3 of Omar’s harvest experience at Calera. If you missed the previous posts click part 1 & part 2 to get the whole story.
In addition to lab tests and punching down, I also got to receive grapes coming from the vineyards and run them through the destemmer, crush Viognier in a vaslin press …
By Ben Collins
It took a lot of planning this particular trip – we have been trying to get our act together for a couple of years. Talk and no action. Crowded schedules (not mine of course), business trips, children were swept aside and Michael Saunders and I finally fixed a ski trip to the Dolomites with the great Urs Vetter of Lageder.
Every time we saw Urs for months …
By Bibendumtimes
Richard and Dave, bottom left
As if you needed any convincing that Bibendum is an outward looking organisation, Richard Yates one of the Team leaders at Bibendum working on Corporate Sales is a volunteer lifeboat man with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. The RNLI take men and women volunteers and train them fully to be a member of a real lifeboat …
By Emma-Jane Bailey
The action
There’s something special about Champagne. Always has been, and I hope there always will be. Last week’s Tasting Club chose to focus on bubbles from that very specific region of France, and once the rather stringent rules controlling the production of the original fizz have been explained, you begin to realise why it tends to cost …
By Samantha Sherwood
Melnik
A tiny village on the Bulgarian/ Greek border that hosts a couple of special wineries. Named after the white chalk soils that surrounds the village it also gives its name to the local red variety. The Melnik vines can grow only on these local soil and cannot be found elsewhere.
The hours of bus journeys and trekking up to the cellars …
By Omar Raafat
Punching down workout
It’s easy to miss the turning into the region’s most prestigious winery and I very nearly did, coming as it does just after a slight bend in the road and with not much by way of signage to warn you but after a swift (and probably illegal) reversing manoeuvre I was in! …
