Fermented fluids
Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
in Heaven
Has anyone around here found something interesting to drink lately? I ask because I have just dealt with a decanted miniature of 'Springbank 16, local barley' from 2016 (that's a Scotch whisky from Campbelltown, for those unacquainted with it) given to me by a sensitive and caring nephew. It would be vulgar to mention the price of a bottle here, but it is something to be treated with reverence. My own whisky buying is strictly limited to the single malts at the duty free shop at Glasgow Airport - usually a good selection. Since a bottle lasts me several years, my small hoard will probably last me the rest of my life.
So.... Any good beer, wine, spirit discoveries or favourites that Shipmates should know about?
So.... Any good beer, wine, spirit discoveries or favourites that Shipmates should know about?
Comments
https://www.lcbo.com/en/casal-de-ventozela-loureiro-2014-445098
Somewhat to my surprise, there are actually two Lebanese reds at the Ontario LCBO these days, both from Chateau Ksara and both recommended by reliable sources. I accidentally bought two bottles of the more expensive one, mistaking it for the cheaper one I intended to buy. It was quite nice but basically a Bordeaux blend intended to age for another year or two and an odd match for the pizza we were sharing with a friend. Will report back on the other one if and when I pick up a bottle...
I shall be looking forward to the review!
At some point I switched from wine to cider. I have no idea why. Changing tastes?
Also recently opened in Hay-on-Wye is a shop called Wobbly Owl, which sells farm cider and gins and so on. I got some for my sister for Christmas, and I haven't had any complaints!
I don't buy a lot of wine, but recently I noticed that the local Co-op stocks Hereford red wine. It's actually a Spanish wine, but it tastes very nice and full bodied.
For the price, it's a fairly decent glass. Spot the Co-op shoppers... Certainly better than cooking quality!
Our budget fave, which we stock up on every time we pass one (even on holiday...) is Lidl's £5ish Riesling - it's ridiculously good for the price (Riesling is a grape that the Brits have never rated, especially as it's German, so often good for a bargain). Soft enough to drink with itself, but sharp enough to cut through spice and grease with a meal.
Occasionally they stock a 2.5% Normandy cider, but that's a middle-aisle rarity rather than a regular.
Visiting the Highland Park distillery in Kirkwall a few years ago, we saw a bottle selling for £3,000, and asked the guide if they sold many. He didn't give a straight answer, but advised us to buy three: one to drink, one to give to a favourite child, and one to keep as an investment that would pay for all three after a few years. It was tempting, of course, but I settled for something a little cheaper at the airport duty-free shop a few days later.
Single malt is popular chez Twang and G&Ts in the summer.
Red wine is also enjoyed.
Port and brandy are nice on occasion.
Lidl is always good for a boozy bargain I find.
We will pray with those old druids
They drink fermented fluids
Waltzing naked though the woo-ids
And it's good enough for me
Interesting, reading the description of non alcoholic spirits, they are supposed to contain less than 0.5% by volume. Bananas have greater alcohol content.
The brand of the non alcoholic spirits is Free Spirit.
Enjoy the gin and vermouth!
I must remember that!
Bought some today. Review to follow.
It is very mead, right, and our bounden duty, always and everywhere…
I do like the non-alcoholic Guinness.
I drink less than I used to but @Twangist's tastes sound similar to my own.
A bottle of single malt lasts me almost a year. Effectively from Christmas to Advent (or thereabouts).
I tend to drink French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese wines rather than southern hemisphere ones. I've had a very decent Romanian pinot noir from our local farm shop. Swiss pinot-noir is good too.
I tend to go for red wines but have a bottle of white wine from Kent which I'll open after Easter.
I only drink cider in the summer and autumn and probably have no more than 2 or 3 bottles a year. In pubs I'll always go for a cask ale or a non-alcoholic beer if it's a fasting period or I'm driving. I find soft drinks too sweet.
Being alone now I don't frequent pubs as often as I did. I had a few decent pints of Butty Bach in South Wales recently. That varies in quality but is better close to its Herefordshire home turf. Around here, I particularly like the Wincle ales. I thoroughly recommend those.
St Peter's range of beers is wonderful.
I know the name Lacons, but I don't think I ever drank any beers from them.
I was hoping to revisit the Reindeer - but it seems to have closed in 2018.
Adnams is excellent too when it's on form.
Is Batemans still going up in Lincolnshire?
Over in Yorkshire it has to be Black Sheep or Timothy Taylor's Landlord which isn't as spectacular as it once was.
'Like angels dancing on the tongue.'
I expect they'll have preserved it as it was up in Heaven if we get there ...
I'm old enough to mourn the passing of some decent pints. Youngs, for instance.
Tetley could be a cracking pint in certain Leeds pubs but it never travelled well and wasn't to be confused with the dreadful stuff on the western side of the Pennines.
Whatever happened to Stones from Sheffield? That could be a tidy pint.
But some are less mourned. Flowers for instance.
I don't miss Courage Best or even Courage Director's. Hancock's in my native South Wales is so-so.
Brain's SA and Brain's Dark can be very good and I've a soft spot for Felinfoel when it's on form.
Please ... please stop. It's getting close to Lent.
OoOoOh, Brains Dark, nectar of the gods, and Im not even Welsh!
If I'm drinking spirits, it'll be GIN; the current bottle in my larder is LinGin, made locally.
I'm no wine connoisseur hut I do find southern hemisphere ones very full-on and fruity - which isn't a bad thing of course. I find French reds more subtle and I'm very partial to a vanilla-y Rioja. That's very '80s of me perhaps.
Ooh rioja.... (and I only just drank in the 80s and not wine!!!!)
Two interacting trends; people have come to associate southern hemisphere (especially Australian) wines with those very fruity/jammy flavours and so the stuff in the supermarkets largely follows that trend, Secondly for a long time a lot of the wine world followed the lead of Robert Parker - a well known wine critic - and he and many of his acolytes preferred a particular type of wine ('Parkerisation' so called). This led to wine producers doing things like micro-oxygenation in order to produce particular flavour profiles (the documentary film 'Mondovino' is a good watch if you are interested)
As trends shift (and Parker has retired) it's easier to find wines that don't fit this stereotype. In the UK, The Wine Society is a good place to find wines of all sorts at most budgets, and as they only aim to cover costs are generally a good deal.
It looks as if I'll be spending a fair bit of time in various hostelries in Norwich - The Rouen used to be the diggers' pub back when I was an archaeologist digging up the Castle Mall (it's changed hands since, probably more than once!) and The Murderers/Gardeners Arms was another favoured pub.
I am also a Malbec fan. Costco in Arizona carries a Kirkland labelled Malbec for about $7 which is quite nice, and affordable.
I enjoy scotch, and have tasted many that I like. One favorite is Talisker, from the Isle of Skye.
My tastes in wine are pretty broad… a lot of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, with selective forays into the stuff we do well in Ontario. But there’s lot’s of good stuff out there that I will happily sample from all over the world.
Having lived in Lisbon at one time, we like Portuguese wines. The Alentejo wines, especially from Borba, are good - we had a "second quality" one with our Christmas venison and it went well (that was over £20, the "first quality" was over £30!). We also like Vinho Verde but a lot of what one gets in British supermarkets is too sweet. Aside from these, we enjoy Alsace wines, especially Sylvaner, and Normandy cider ...
Tried the Ksara again this evening and it wasn't as strange. I think my palate was playing tricks on me last time.
We enjoyed a lot of good wines when we were in Portugal a few years ago. Some of them have made their way to Ontario but mostly not. The basic Vinho Verdes in Ontario are pretty meh at best but there's a very nice Alvarinho that comes in from time to time. The one I mentioned in this thread was kind of midrange - a nice dry crisp white, but not going to change the world.