The Aperitif Guy

Although the British have been importing wines, off and on, from the time of the Roman Empire, wine drinking has been the preserve of the wealthy for much of that history. From the late 1970s, a number of wine merchants set out to change that, first by introducing sweeter, German wines, then fruity New World wines, until we were drinking so much that the UK is now the biggest importer of wines in the world. It's surprising, too, how quickly we have taken to wine growing. Historians will shout out that those Romans planted vines in the first century, but you wouldn't call it a significant industry, and it was more or less confined to the southern parts of what is now England. Today, more and more land is being cultivated for vines, as the English and Welsh discover what can be achieved with the right grape varieties and careful viticulture. Scotland and Northern Ireland have not yet produced wine on an economically viable scale. I've written about Welsh wines in the past (…

One of the great advantages of living in a town such as Harrogate is having ready access to amazing produce. For a small town, it still boasts plenty specialist grocers and delis, independent fishmongers, butchers and greengrocers. One thing I rarely buy, though, is game birds. The thing is, when you live in a rural area, it doesn't take long to make friends who shoot. I've lost track of the times I've arrived home from work to find something dead hanging off the back door, and I've had to teach myself to pluck, gut and clean various birds and small mammals. Mercifully, I'm not squeamish! If I know someone's going out, I might put a request in, but you never know what's coming back. Pheasants are common, but I've also had mallard, teal, pochard, partridge, rabbit and hare.

In the UK, at least, game cookery has become associated with the upper classes and country houses, and I do think it has suffered from a degree of inverse-snobbery about that. The re…

Autumn is my favourite time of the year for cooking and entertaining. I love to cook with wild mushrooms, orchard fruits, game birds and nuts. Autumn flowers may be hard to come by, but squashes, pumpkins and displays of golden foliage can bring great beauty to your table. Now's the time to let go of my preference for white linen and reach for the cinnamon-red tablecloth, or even a deep brown one.


I've been thinking about the flavours I particularly associate with autumn and how we might bring them to the aperitif table. I'll look at four flavours in particular: smoke, apples, pears and blackberries.

Smoke
Smoked foods of all descriptions make for delicious aperitif nibbles. Simple cubes of smoked cheddar cheese are lovely with a sweet white wine. Look for something with a hint of apple, like a late harvest chenin blanc. Don't ever be afraid of serving a sweet wine as an aperitif. As well as wine, port, Madeira and sherry can all bring a touch of sophistication before d…

We often think of the 1920s as the heyday of cocktail drinking. This is partly because the prohibition of the manufacture, sale and possession of alcohol in the USA, from 1917 to 1933, drove many wealthy Americans to seek refreshment in the hotels and restaurants of the European capitals. The strength of mixed drinks, and their endless variations of flavour and colour, seemed to fit with the mood of cities rediscovering joy after the horrors of the Great War. The leisured classes relished the fun and frivolity of cocktails and could afford to patronise bars that employed expert cocktail waiters, who were starting to be feted as celebrities.

 That's not where cocktails began, though. The earliest known evidence of the word being used to refer to alcohol comes from the Balance and Columbian Repository, a New York newspaper, when the editor answered the question "What is a cocktail?" thus:
     "Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar,…

We don't think of our food culture in western Europe as having been influenced by Russia, but without it we wouldn't have chefs in tall hats, pre-dinner drinks & nibbles or dining in a series of courses. If you've been following this series about menu-planning, you'll know that this style of dining is known as service russe - Russian service.

When the Tsars established their capital at St Petersburg, they made a conscious determination to look westward to Europe. Catherine the Great, in particular, brought in western aesthetics in art and design and western ideas about education and government. She introduced the practice of speaking French at the Imperial court, since French was the most popular language among European diplomats at the time, and brought over French cooks to work at court. Very quickly, it became very fashionable to employ a French cook, bringing French flair to the vast resources the Russian empire brought to the capital. The Russian Orthodox Chu…

Over the years, I've visited a few whisky distilleries. The highlands and islands of Scotland, in particular, are home to many distilleries, set in beautiful surroundings, which have seen commercial advantages to receiving visitors. Until this year, I hadn't been inside a gin distillery, though, and I thought it about time I rectified that. (Pardon the pun.) 



As luck would have it, I discovered the Lakes Distillery, through their exceptionally clean-tasting gin. Then I discovered that they are open to tourists and even have a bistro on site. Perfect. We booked ourselves in for a distillery tour - and lunch in the Bistro - on the way home from a weekend away. We were blessed with a quiet day and the wisdom to book a morning tour. Not only did this provide us with an ideal aperitif before lunch, it meant we had the tour guide to ourselves. We could ask trivial questions, probing questions, follow tangents and cause our guide a giggle, all without worrying about how it came acr…