Guerrilla Wine Tasting

One of the conversations I vaguely remember having at the Fernandez&Leluu dinner was with one of their helpers, Claire, co-founder and cook of another secret supper club, the Green Onion Supper Club situated in a Hackney council flat. What was even more appealing about Claire’s club was that she referred to herself as a guerilla cook! Love it! Just like my Guerilla winetasting adventure with Eatlikeagirl.

A few emails later and we had arranged to do a quick guerilla wine tasting during the supper. We’d swoop in and swoop out having distributed some quick tastings of the wine we had to hand. I had a few bottles from the Portuguese Big Tasting with Oz Clarke at Waitrose which I thought would go well with Claire’s menu of venison terrine, mutton pie and chocolate mousse.

And so, Niamh and I were off to do our tasting. Unfortunately, I’ve just moved to the Dalston/Hackney area so we quickly got lost. After traipsing around the council flats of Hackney for at least an hour, we finally gave in and sent out an SOS to please come and find us! Turns out we were just around the corner from the flat/supper club venue but these things are very well hidden. Judging on this and my last foray into finding secret supper clubs, you shouldn’t attempt to play hide and seek with these people, you’ll never find them!

We got there just in time to eat. I quickly gave a brief run down of the first wine, a vinho verde. Vinho Verde is so called not because it’s green but because it’s young. The Quinta de Azevedo 2008 (£6.16) was a very tasty, light and fruity example of what vinho verde is all about.  A slight tickle of bubbles on my tongue followed by lemonadey-citrus flavours but tempered by a crisp acidity that made this just the ticket to start the evening. Even though people were talking all over each other, most agreed it was fresh and easy drinking.

With the venison terrine, I gave a quick shot of the Arco de Esporao 2008 Alentejo (£9.49). A blend of indigenous varietals, mostly aragonez and trincadeira, it had a lovely spicy nose, dark fruits to the fore on the nose and palate. It was big enough to handle the game with some nice spiced fruit notes coming through and a long finish.

By the time we got to the last wine, I had lost most of the crowd except for the few die-hards, there are always some about, who were interested in the Waitrose Douro Valley Reserve Quinta de la Rosa 2007 (£9.49). A full, robust wine, I had saved it to go with the chocolate dessert. I like red wines with dessert, although if there is a dessert wine in the house, I won’t say no. I was going to serve it with the mutton but I’m glad I held off. A powerful yet fruity wine, when combined with the chocolate mousse we had for dessert, it was a winner. The wine enhanced the chocolatey goodness in the bowl while at the same time still managing to show off some sweet blackberry fruit  and spice character.

So our guerilla winetasting was a success, I think. People enjoyed the Portuguese wines and at the end of the evening, a few came up to me and asked me for the names of the wines as they were going to go out and buy them. Score 1 for Waitrose’s selection of Portuguese wines.

All wines available from Waitrose.