News from the vine!
I’m delighted to announce that I am hosting an excellent wine tasting at the stunningly beautiful Casta Rustica in the mountains above Benissa (Alicante, España), this coming Saturday 1st Sept. – an excellent way to start a new month!
The tasting is full so I’m afraid there’s no space for any others who may be interested, however I’m recording it here as there will be others! Please therefore, contact me with your e-mail address so that I can include your details on my e-mail list so that in the future you will receive advance notice about suche events.
The top wines to be tasted are: Paco & Lola, Albariño, DO Rias Baixas; Bodegas Viñas Del Vero, Riesling, DO Somantano; Bodegas Fariña, Campus 2006, DO Toro; Arzuaga Reserva 2008, DO Riberal del Duero; Bodegas Vicente Gandía Raiza Gran Reserva 2005, DOCa. La Rioja. That’s two excellent white wines and three super reds!
Casa Rustica will be the perfect, rustic setting for tasting wines of such quality and our hosts, Sue and Roger Peacock, are providing appropriate tapas for each wine. Plus three couples are staying the night (Dinner B&B) in this splendid Finca Rural accommodation!
All in all it promises to be an excellent evening – watch this space for an update after the event.
Twenty family and friends celebrated Sandra’s birthday at John and Sandra’s beautiful house on Montgo recently with a cheese and wine evening that I had the pleasure of presenting, with excellent assistance from Dom, John’s 9 year old grandson who helped with the foils, corks and the wine pouring as well as holding up the DO Map of Spain!; along with Claire, who advised on cheeses, did the filming and laid out the cheese boards. Mine was the easy bit!
We chose 5 different cheeses, three French and two Spanish, each to be accompanied by a different wine. Whilst many like to drink red wine with cheese – there are some cheeses that go very nicely with white wine and we started with Avgvstvs Chardonnay FB 2011 – a superb, Burgundy style wine.
The rest of the wines were red, supplied by my friends at Bodegas Sierra Salinas (Mo Tinto 2010; Puerto Salinas 2009); and Bodegas Castaño (Colección 2009; Castaño Dulce Monastrell 2009).
The wines were, as expected, really tasty with depth too – we each had our favourites of course. Plus the cheeses were excellent and the combined flavours of cheese and wine worked very well.
Such nights can be arranged for anyone – please contact me for details: colin@colinharknessonwine.com
“Colin, thank you again for a great evening last Sunday. Your wine appreciation session went down so well with the couples on our Yoga Break in Spain. You’ll be pleased to know there wasn’t a drop of wine left in the bottles you put on the table after you finished your session! You’re a fantastic ambassador for Spanish wines – I hope the wine producers appreciate what a great asset you are to them. Your knowledge, enthusiasm & passion for wine is truly infectious. I am most certainly going to take more time in choosing & appreciating local wines now & I feel confident that there will be a great many more bottles of Spanish wines sold in the UK now our yoga holiday guests have had the pleasure of meeting you & trying the great selection of wines you bought to our session.”
