Easter rush

It's all been quite hectic at Wine In Cornwall for the past week, with everybody getting ready for the Easter holidays, lots of customers have just started waking up for the season. The boys in the warehouse are working furiously to get all the orders out before tomorrow. Which has all been made harder as we are 2 men down at the moment due to illness. Extra vans & staff have been brought in to help over the next few weeks to have with the double bank holiday rush. Apologies for the sparse posting over the last few weeks, its been a bit manic in the office.

Anyway to keep morale up homemade Blueberry cake and mini Easter eggs have been brought in, yum. Hope you have a lovely Easter weekend and get to go out in the sunshine.

Feeling Pink.

Looking forward to the Cloudy Bay dinner at Alba, St Ives this weekend, it should be a landmark occasion.

With so many Bank Holidays coming up and spectacular spring weather thoughts inevitably turn to pink wines - so what’s showing well in this department I hear you ask? Well, rosé lovers seem to fall pretty neatly into three categories:

a. medium sweet/blush

b. full bodied off dry/ deep pink and

c. dry/salmon pink

So it will depend which category you feel fits best for you but here goes anyway. For category a. which we despairingly call “Girlie Wines” (no angry letters please ladies) the prettily packaged Sentina Pinot Grigio Blush (£4.99) is fun while the R. H. Phillips Night Harvest White Zinfandel (£8.50) is smart and very succulent. For the deeper coloured medium dry bunch  Spain is a happy hunting ground and the amazingly consistent, juicy Quinta Hinojal Tempranillo Rosado (£5.29) always shows well while new this year is a blistering pink Malbec from Toso (£8.50) in Argentina, very weighty and packed with big red fruit flavours. In the dry section the ever popular Domaine Piqueroque from Provence (£7.30) is a sure fire winner – mineral dry and vibrant while the St Felix Rosé (£5.48) from the Languedoc is in a similar style if just a touch fruitier and less fine.

Prices are valid until the end of April after which our annual price review will be implemented which will include the Chancellor’s extra duty hit as announced in the Budget.

Victoria Inn's 5th Anniversary Dinner

Nigel presented the wines at another anniversary the following evening, this time at the Victoria Inn, Perranuthnoe, where Stewart and Anna were celebrating five years at the helm. Stewart, classically trained by Raymond Blanc, is the epitome of a star chef-patron and it really shows in his assured and inspirational cuisine. The excellent dinner featured duck and duck eggs from the Cornish Duck Company at Grampound Road, whose owners  Roger and Tanya gave a brilliant presentation on their life as duck farmers.

They are true food heroes producing happy ducks for very happy chefs throughout the Westcountry. Once again Urgoiti Rioja Crianza 2005 did a fine job on the duck breast main course while the restrained oak and buttery mouthfeel of the Wakefield Estate Clare Valley Chardonnay 2008 was good match to a crispy duck egg starter. Mike’s suggestion for the rhubarb dessert was the creamy, prosecco-like Mionetto Legatura Frizzante Rosato and it worked very well (much to Nigel’s annoyance as he had been a touch sceptical).

Mike was supposed to have presented this dinner, but was taken ill the day before. Since then our dear Henry has also been off ill, so we were a bit rushed last week. Apologies, therefore for not posting earlier, but we are back on stream now!