Posts Tagged ‘wine’
California Part 1: Finding a sense of place
PETER RANSCOMBE OAKÂ can be a double-edged wooden sword in winemaking. At its best, it can impart aromas and flavours of vanilla and sweet spices like cinnamon and cloves, as well as bringing a rounded mouthfeel to a wine. At its worst, the oak can dominate, overpowering the primary fruit and leaving drinkers checking for tiny…
Read MoreCalifornia Part 2: Critters in the vineyard
PETER RANSCOMBE AT THE top of a very tall pole in the Trefethen Family Vineyard, there sits a box. And in that box, there lives a family of barn owls. Over the course of a year, that single family can eat more than 2,000 gophers or “critters”, helping to control one of the pests that…
Read MoreCalifornia Part 3: Diversity in the winery and in the glass
PETER RANSCOMBE THINK you know Californian wines? Think again. They’re mostly white zinfandel or blush aren’t they, with some over-oaked and over-ripe chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons thrown in at the top end, right? Wrong. If California was a nation then it would be the world’s fourth-largest wine producer, behind Italy, France and Spain. That scale…
Read MorePort of Leith Distillery to return to Edinburgh’s historic whisky district
Whisky distilling will return to Leith with the construction of a state of the art distillery in Edinburgh’s port district beside Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre and The Royal Yacht Britannia; the first purpose-built single malt distillery to be constructed in the capital for over a century. Founded by Ian Stirling and Patrick Fletcher, who grew…
Read MoreWines to take home from Contini
PETER RANSCOMBE IT’S a situation that will ring bells with most diners – after enjoying a delicious bottle of wine with your meal, you quickly scribble down the name from the label so you can try it again at home. You search high and low on the shelves of your local bottle shop but, to…
Read MoreFewer calories but no compromise on taste
PETER RANSCOMBE AS JANUARY draws to a close, those new year’s resolutions are getting harder and harder to keep. For anyone who over-indulged during the festive period by reaching for that extra mince pie or another slice of Christmas cake, weight loss is usually top of the list come Hogmanay. While our food packaging is covered…
Read MoreSix ideas for Burns Night
Six ideas for Burns Night PETER RANSCOMBE THE tatties have been dug up, the neeps have been steeping for weeks and the haggis has been caught from the hillside. It can all mean only one thing – Burns Night is nearly upon us again. Time to take a look through the notebook from the past few…
Read MoreA boat trip around the Firth of Forth
By Conan D’Agostino Having somehow wriggled off the hook of routine, we looked at each other, our smiles flickering between nervousness of the alien and excitement for the novel and our hands clasped tighter than usual as we waited. There were other people present, as there always are, everywhere, but they appeared as if mannequins –…
Read MoreThis pub aint big enough for the both of us…
Hmm, Sparks 1974, or was it “town” not pub, never mind, the gauntlet has been thrown down, Mrs A and her friends have decided to meet up in our pub tonight at exactly the same day and time that we (men) normally go there. What do we do? We can’t go there, we wouldn’t be…
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