The Aperitif Guy

Living close to the wonderful agricultural belt around Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, I find myself getting more and more excited each year as the end of May approaches and the first of the local asparagus starts to appear in the shops. Nothing compares to English asparagus in season. It’s fresh-tasting and fragrant, slightly sweet and a touch astringent at the same time. Its effect on the kidneys is the stuff of mythology and makes a fascinating study in itself, while the shape and sensuality of eating the stems have been said to be aphrodisiac. I shall confine my comments, though, to its taste. The earliest asparagus to appear is the sprue, fine stems that have been thinned out to encourage the plant to grow thicker. It has all the taste of the bigger stems but is sold more cheaply. You won’t find it in the supermarkets, though. It’s considered almost a by-product of the main crop and not worth bagging up. Farmers tend to sell it loose to local markets and greengrocers. Because th...

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 ...