How do you select wine?

This week’s post comes to you a couple of days early because I won’t be around on Friday evening, when I normally add the finishing touches, and release it into the abyss. That’s right, my birthday treat has arrived, and the missus and I are headed on a road trip to the Isle of Islay, where they make several of my favourite whiskies. I never thought I’d go there, but there you go; Mrs Cake is known to pull out all the stops from time to time. I will tell you all about the trip and all the things I learn at some point in the future, but don’t be expecting it next week; it will probably take me a good couple of months to write it up. For now though, please enjoy this week’s post, which is concerned with how difficult it is for novices like me to go wine shopping.

Last Saturday the wife and I hosted a dinner party at our house for 8 of my friends from work. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work (pretty near a whole day cooking in the kitchen) that the missus organised and coordinated with military precision, and it required a lot of drinking. To facilitate the drinking though, I got to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes; booze shopping.

I’ve been budgeting in a ruthless manner since paying for numerous holidays in 2011 and the wedding in 2012 led to my credit card bill going through the roof, so I rather optimistically planned to get all the booze in for £30. Oddly enough, and thanks to Tesco’s clubcard scheme, I only exceeded that by £5.

It was a case of quantity not quality really, so not the most exciting trip ever, but it did give me chance to explore the possibilities of some budget brands, and I was able to leave feeling only a minimum quantity of guilt.

What was most challenging though, was the purchase of the wine. In case you missed it any of the previous times I said it, I’m just not into wine. I don’t find it interesting, I don’t find it particularly tasty, I don’t find it particularly demands that I drink it – unlike other kinds of booze, and I really don’t enjoy shopping for it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I dislike wine, but let’s say I have a glass of wine: it will take me ages to drink that glass, and then I won’t want another one. So suffice to say; I don’t really see the point, and I don’t see how anyone can be that bothered about it.

But! Sometimes it is necessary to buy wine, like when you’re hosting a party and some of the guests are going to be girls. Sure, I knew everyone would be bringing their own booze, but you do need to provide some basic provisions. To complicate things, two of our guests were Will and Catriona, who actively like wine. A lot. So I felt I needed to get some decent wine, if at all possible, even though it seemed likely we’d end up with it at the end of the night, and there’s no point in us ending up with it, because we just don’t drink wine. I drink beer and spirits and Mrs Cake just doesn’t tend to drink casually at all.

The other purchases were more or less trouble free. I started with vodka from Aldi. Mrs Cake had planned vodka jellies, and I wasn’t sure there was enough Red Square left to do the job. It turned out that there wasn’t – we used half a pint of vodka, half a pint of boiling water and half a pint of cold water to make the jelly, so the purchase of Aldi’s more premium brand proved necessary. I was tempted to get the brand that is just called “Vodka”, but they did have a Tamova Blue Label premium variety (as opposed to the standard red label), and I figured I’d go for that this time. It’s 50cl, 40% ABV, and £9.50 or something like that.

vodka; out with the old...

...and in with the new

I’ve tried it on its own since, and it’s neither better nor worse than any other standard budget vodka, from what I can tell without doing a proper taste test. I think it’s a bit stronger than the red Tamova, and a little bit more expensive, so that’s probably why it’s called ‘premium’.

I overruled Mrs Cake’s insistence that we should get the wine from Aldi. Sure, for us it’s ok, but “bottled exclusively for Aldi” just doesn’t seem right when it’s for other people.

It was off to Tesco then, where I picked up some beers (Tuborg, that only I drank), cider (Magners, that no one drank, but I have been enjoying since), and Sierra Reposado tequila (gold, 38% ABV, 50cl) that I used to make a variety of margarita (Cadillac) that went down quite well. I hadn’t seen the gold variety of Sierra before, and it now holds the record for briefest lifespan (about 3 hours from breaking the seal to placing the empty bottle in the recycling). About 24 measures were required for the cocktail, and we finished the rest off in shots. That’s what I bought it for, and it won’t be missed. My el Jimador, 100% agave has frankly exposed cheaper tequila for what it really is. I kept that under wraps for myself.

Yeah whatever, Neil; what about the wine? I’m getting to that: how do you choose wine? There’s so fricking much of it! Why is there so much? The prices vary greatly, and experts tell you that the more you pay, the better variety of grape you’re getting, but wine ‘experts’ on TV tell you that cheaper ones can be just as good… It’s difficult, and I don’t even care that much, but I did want my wine-appreciating friends to enjoy it.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to go overboard, and figured a bottle of white and a bottle of red would do. From what I’ve heard, pink (or rose) seems to have fallen somewhat out of general favour of late, and it seems we’ve already got two bottles of that in our cupboard.

So the first stop was the special offers section. If it said ‘half price’ and half price was £5 or less, it had a chance. I was struggling, because I have an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t buy Blossom Hill, Jacob’s Creek or Kumala (amongst others). I’m not sure why, but they just seem ordinary. Everyone’s had them before, they’re always on offer, and while I’m far from qualified enough to be a wine snob, I just don’t think they’re going to impress anyone when they see the bottle.

Mrs Cake offered, “look for ones that have got badges”. She meant of course, wines that have won awards – which is nearly all the ones in Aldi, but surprisingly few of the ones in Tesco. In one or two instances there were bottles that looked like they’d got badges, but we couldn’t be sure, and figured they were a cunning ploy to trick amateurs like us into buying them.

 Finally, after what seemed like forever, we chose two bottles. I have no idea what they were, where they were from, what grape variety they were made from or anything like that because, as I say, wine just isn’t interesting to me, so if you were hoping for some detail, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

At the party I made a point of asking people who cared about wine, how they went about selecting it. They said go to the special offer section, and look for badges. It seems we’d done the right thing. A lot of the awards are based on blind taste tests (IWSC or example), so you’d think they must be all right if they’ve got a badge. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily agree, though.

We managed to foist the bottle of red on our guests, but the white remained untouched, and has been added to the wine graveyard that takes up one half of my Special Spirits Cabinet. We also managed to acquire two further bottles from guests. Ass! And some cider – yay

I tried a glass of red a couple of days later, and I didn’t like it at all. Then, later in the week I stuck a half finished bottle of pink in the fridge and tried a glass – and that was really nice. Perhaps it’s too early to write pink wine off? I don’t know what brand it was, but it was pink so you probably don’t care anyway.

The vodka jellies went down very well, the cocktails went down very well, and the only thing that didn’t was my aguardiente de orujo (RuaVieja). I couldn’t believe it, but no one liked it AT ALL. I mean, that’s fine; more for me, but no one could believe I would enjoy drinking it; they looked at me like I was crazy or something. Well, I like it, I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Sadly it is now finished, but that just means I can start thinking about replacing it.

So, I’d like to know if you have any suggestions for making the chore of selecting wine easier. Don’t be shy. Be warned though, I don’t want recommendations, I want methods. Thanks in advance.

What Can I Do With This Bottle of... Part 1: Glayva

In a previous post I wrote of a few simple, 2 ingredient drinks that you could make when you wanted something tasty and refreshing, but especially if you had a bottle of something that you just don’t like on its own. I’ve come into possession of a few of those recently, and the thought occurred to me – why let it sit untouched on your shelf, when you can use it to make something nice? And why leave it untouched on your shelf when you can experiment with it, and then write about it on your booze blog?

So the simple act of trying to find a use for the black sheep of my booze family, the Raggy Dolls of my alcoholic toy factory, the er… Nickelbacks of my North American rock bands… has led me to a new feature – What can I do with this bottle of…? None of the answers to this question are "stick it up your arse," by the way.

In this new feature, I’ll be actively setting myself challenges, but I won’t be limiting myself to simple drinks. Perhaps as this progresses I might be able to help you out if you’ve acquired something you aren’t keen on drinking. I could be a booze consultant, perhaps with a salary to match.

Part 1: Glayva

Bottles of Glayva were on offer a little while ago, and I decided to try it out. Glayva is a Scottish liqueur, based on whisky and a secret combination of spices with tangerines, cinnamon, almonds and honey. It falls under the Whyte and Mackay stable, and weighs in at 35% ABV.

Despite its on bottle boast of ‘the best liqueur in the world’, I have to tell you there’s a very good chance that it’s not the best liqueur in the world. In fact it tastes like that sweetened medicine you used to get as a child. And how do you substantiate a claim like that, anyway? Mind you, on that subject, www.glayva.com claims Glayva has won the ‘prestigious IWSC Award for Best Liqueur an unrivalled 5 times’. Well, they should know what they’re talking about.

A bit of digging into these prestigious awards has turned up some interesting information, including the results of the awards since 2008. In 2008, when Glayva was awarded a gold medal, the conclusion was,

“Light clear golden amber colour. Lifted fine nose, malted whisky with honeysuckle, caramelised citrus peel and aromatic herbs. The distillation and blending here is sensational. All the elements are clearly defined both on the nose and palate but meld superbly.”

The IWSC site could well prove a useful resource for future booze research, so I’ll be taking a note of that one, even if I can’t agree with it on the quality of Glayva. Glayva has been included on shortlists of gold and silver medal winners each year since 2008, but results from the preceding 39 years of competition are absent from the website, so I can’t really confirm whether Glayva actually was best liqueur at any point, nor whether it’s status is ‘unrivalled’.

In the last four years, though:

2008 – one of 9 best in class

2009 – silver medal

2010 – silver; best in class

2011 – silver

So here are the results of my experiments. I tried all of the following combinations. The first five were suggested by the official Glayva website, and the rest were my own ideas.

With ice – the simplest suggestion, and not strictly a combination, but I think it’s essential to try a liqueur in this form before taking investigations any further (and it is suggested on the Glayva website). For me, the holy grail of liqueurs is one that I can happily drink on its own over ice. There are surprisingly few that make the grade, unfortunately. The only one that springs to mind is Vom Fass’s Caipirinha Limette, though I understand that liqueurs are often intended as mixers, and therefore need to be a little sweeter than my palate would like. 

You wouldn’t use the Caipirinha Limette as a mixer - to fill that little bottle you see in the picture below costs £12 (just for the liqueur, not the bottle), and it's far too nice to fritter away in cocktails.

Vom Fass' Caipirinha Limette

So Glayva had its work cut out, and despite its glowing review from IWSC, it doesn’t do it for me. As I said; it reminds me of medicine.

With lemonade – I tried this with normal fizzy lemonade from a bottle, and was unimpressed. It was fine, but you wouldn’t keep buying Glayva for this combination. However, while browsing the excellent Rum Howler Blog, I noticed a review of Glayva, and a recommendation for drinking it with lemonade. It seems lemonade in North America is very different to lemonade in the UK. They make it themselves over there. It still looked very simple, so I figured I could give that a try.

The instructions were to use 1 oz of Glayva, the juice of half a lemon, 1 teaspoon of sugar, ice and top up with water. I’ve never quite found out what an ounce of liquid is, but I’ve got a double ended measuring cup, one measure on one end, two measures on the other. 

measuring cup - you'll be seeing more of this little fella

I’ve always assumed this represented one and two ounces, but I could be wrong – it could just be non-specific measures, which is fine proportionally until you have to mix drinks with more specific units like tablespoons and millilitres. Similarly, I’ve never quite gotten round to figuring out how much juice is in half a lemon. I don’t tend to bother messing around with fresh lemons and limes; the bottled juice has always been adequate. I’m sure people with more sensitive palates than mine will tell you always to use fresh, but remember; you’ve got to drink it how you like it. I like getting my citrus from a bottle (most of the time).

I decided to use two measures of Glayva, rather than just the one, as well as two measures of lemon juice. I can’t remember whether I doubled up on sugar also, but you can always start with one teaspoon and add more if you want it.

It certainly was tastier than the one I’d made with bottled lemonade, but I think I overpowered the Glayva a little at first, and decided to add another non-specific splash of the liqueur. The results were even better. The sugar mostly just sat at the bottom. I tried to stir it well, but sugar doesn’t dissolve all that well at low temperature. I don’t think the sugar is all that necessary, to be fair.

Glayva and (homemade) lemonade (and measuring cup!)

Nevertheless, this made a good drink. I’ll probably make my own lemonade for mixing more frequently.

With ginger ale – a little bit disappointed. I’m not a massive fan of ginger ale, but for some reason the Glayva counteracts ginger ale’s natural spiciness, which leaves this a little more uninteresting than it ought to be. I had imagined they would work, but in my opinion they don’t.

With apple juice – a very pleasant surprise. This is probably my second favourite of all the combinations. The sweetness of the apple juice combines very well with the Glayva, and it seems to improve the further down the drink you get, despite being sure to mix very well at the start. I’ve found surprisingly few cocktails that are made with apple juice, so this is a useful one for finishing off those juice cartons.

With cranberry juice – a decent combination; just be sure not to use too much cranberry juice and completely eclipse the Glayva.

who's that at the back? "It's me! The measuring cup!"

With Irn Bru – the first thing I thought of trying. Both are Scottish, both are similarly orange; it’s almost as if these two belonged together even before you get around to the tasting. They complement each other very well in that sphere too though – I’m surprised this combination wasn’t suggested on Glayva’s website (if you’re reading, Glayva – you can have this one for free). Irn Bru is the traditional Scottish hangover cure, perhaps Glayva and Irn Bru could be the traditional Scottish hair of the dog. I think I’m going to call it the Scotty Dog.

The Scotty Dog

With lime juice – Frankly I haven’t tried anything so far that hasn’t been improved by the addition of lime juice. It could just be me, but I think lime juice is the ultimate drinker’s condiment. Ok, so I haven’t added it to everything, that would be crazy, but with this second Glayva experiment I found a real winner. With a glass of Glayva and half a lime left over from cooking, it was odds on that there was going to be a coming together. This is my favourite. Perhaps it won’t inspire me to buy another bottle of Glayva since there are loads of things that I could add lime juice to in its’ stead, but it will be useful to keep this one in mind for future reference.

With apple juice and lime juice – given the success of Glayva with apple juice and Glayva with lime juice, why not put them together? Well, because it doesn’t seem to work; that’s why. Don’t get me wrong – it’s fine, but for my tastes it is better to stick with one or the other.

That concludes my investigation into possible uses for Glayva. To recap, Irn Bru, lime juice and apple juice all make ideal partners for your Glayva. I hope you find this helpful. Feel free to let me know if you’ve found any combinations that I haven’t considered here, and be sure to check back another time, when I’ll have conducted investigations into such things as uses for the bottles of scotch that you don’t like, and what you can do with amaretto, Southern Comfort and peach schnapps, amongst other things.

A bank holiday weekend is approaching in the UK, so if you're lucky enough to get bank holidays off work, try and have fun and maybe try a few drinks. I'd just like to encourage you to visit the Rum Howler Blog, too if you get the chance.

I'll be taking Brenda out for a date and cocktails tonight, then watching the FA Cup Final on Saturday with some beers, going to Salford's Sounds From the Other City Festival on Sunday before finally recovering with a nice lie in and mellow bank holiday at home drinks on Monday. Then I'll be back next week with some more booze related bumf. Have a good 'un.

Vermouth: What's the point?

Well, I'll tell you.

Vermouth is classed as a fortified and aromatised wine. So according to the useful website http://vermouth101.com/, this means that it has been infused with botanicals to add flavour and colour, and also that the alcohol percentage of the wine has been increased by the addition of spirits. It’s a good way to improve bad wine.

I didn’t know what vermouth was until I started making cocktails, and found that it was used in quite a few (including the world famous Martini), though I had seen it in several Italian cookery recipes. Never though, had I heard of anyone actually drinking it. Apparently that does happen, and you can drink it over ice.

I’ve acquired a couple of bottles – one was brought over by my friend Dave for my first ever cocktail bonanza, and the other was a cheap one that I bought from Aldi for cooking. I had added them to a couple of cocktails, but recently I thought I’d try drinking them.

I understand from the very informative website I referenced earlier that the quality of your vermouth deteriorates pretty quickly, and I’m afraid I’ve had these two bottles for quite a while now, so I can’t pretend that they’re going to taste fresh and exactly as they should, but… I really like them. 

Vermouth101.com suggests you should use a vacuum pump to evacuate air from open bottles before storing, store the bottle in the fridge, keep it away from heat and light, and drink it quickly. I did none of those things, so it’s quite astonishing that I enjoyed them so much. Actually, I did drink them quite quickly, but only after they’d been opened and stored on top of the kitchen cupboard for months.

Neither appear to be premium brands, and information on the internet is limited-to-none. Vinelli is an Aldi product, and therefore its origins and pedigree are somewhat ambiguous, though it was awarded a ‘Gold – Best in Class’ award at the 2010 International Wine and Spirit Competition. Judging is blind, so that’s fairly encouraging.

The Castini does taste a little stale, but it’s very dry, while the Vinelli is very sweet. Both are refreshing, and on the strength of these I think I could find a place for vermouth in my psychological drinks cabinet.

There are times when I want a simple, refreshing [, alcoholic] drink but I don’t want a beer (or cider) and I don’t want to think about mixing things. Cocktails can be fun, but sometimes you don’t want to fanny about picking one and making it. And whisky is delicious, but sometimes you need something you can attack with big swigs.

I could imagine vermouth would be a good drink to accompany a meal so recently, as Brenda and I sat down for dinner at the Lake District’s The Swan Hotel and Spa – a pleasantly swanky and middle aged (in a good way) retreat – I had a flash of inspiration. Wine doesn’t interest me, and I didn’t fancy a beer (I’d just had one in our room), but I did want something quite refreshing, so I decided I’d put the hypothesis that you should be able to drink whatever you like, when you like and how you like to the test, and try ordering vermouth.

It was a fun little adventure. I asked for dry vermouth, over ice and the waitress immediately looked confused and carefully wrote down exactly what I’d said. Clearly I’d made an unusual request – a fact that became more apparent when the waitress returned a couple of minutes later to regrettably inform me that they didn’t have any “ver… mouth,” and would I like anything else.

No, that was ok. I couldn’t really think of anything else I wanted, though I was surprised they didn’t have any – what if someone ordered a martini? Life isn’t a Bond film and this isn’t Monte Carlo, so I guess it isn’t so common an occurrence as I grew up thinking it might be. Nevertheless, a few minutes after that the waitress returned holding a bottle of Noilly Prat - like when they show you the wine you selected. They didn’t know what it was, but they had Googled ‘vermouth’, and found that they did have some. Brenda and I were pleased to be able to commend them for their tenacity and customer service, and I got to act all knowledgeable, explaining what vermouth was – Brenda chimed in with, “it’s used to make a martini!” -  as well as feel a bit special since, with the help of the waitress, I had scored a victory for ordering what you want. Take that, wine!

Thinking back now, I suppose it would have been fun to have ordered another obscure drink, and then see how many drinks I could order that they didn’t have. I probably don’t know that many obscure drinks.

How was it? Well, it was enjoyable, and it didn’t taste much different from the Castini I had been drinking at home. I had been concerned about my Castini having deteriorated given that I’d had it for so long, but on this evidence the deterioration wasn’t that acute.

On the negative side, my drink was a lot smaller than it would have been if I’d poured it myself, but that’s always the way, I suppose. In terms of quantity it was probably equivalent to a double measure, and it came in a whisky glass (more of a tumbler, I suppose – not one of those whisky glasses that experts say you should drink from but no one has them and you can’t buy them anywhere…).

I like to put four or five ice cubes in a wine glass, and pour a generous measure – about the quantity of a nice glass of wine, so perhaps the next step is to be specific about how I want it – I could say, “three fingers of dry vermouth with ice – in a wine glass” or, “pour until you think you’ve poured too much, and then pour a little bit more.” Something like that.

Vermouth 101 states that in Europe vermouth is primarily thought of as a ‘standalone aperitif’, and is served neat, chilled or over ice in 2-3 oz servings – that’s 2-3 measures as far as I’m aware. To make things simpler, I could ask for 3 measures of vermouth with ice… but I think that might not be quite enough. Whatever. Will I actually be ordering vermouth again? I don’t know; time will tell.

When we got the bill the vermouth was £2.20, so that didn’t strike me as being too bad.

So vermouth: give it a try.

Now, since it’s Friday I’d just like to mention the weekend. I’d love this blog to be able to provide the kind of cutting edge reporting that keeps you abreast of new alcohol related developments and events but unfortunately I have a job… and this isn’t it, so I’m afraid I can’t quite be current enough in that regard. This weekend though, sees the return of the Ramsbottom Chocolate Festival.

http://chocfest.wordpress.com/

What’s that got to do with alcohol? Well, nothing obvious, but a quick glance at the programme reveals a few alcohol and chocolate related curiosities including chocolate liqueurs and chocolate beer cocktails. I’m planning on taking Brenda if the weather’s nice and the boiler repairman arrives in good time on Saturday. I have a bit of a hankering for some beer, and could be in the market for fancy chocolate flavoured liqueurs. Hopefully I’ll be able to give you a debriefing of what goes on next week. If you’re in the Manchester/Bury area, take a look. You might see me there.