There’s a chill in the air this morning and a low damp mist hanging in the garden that will probably lift as the day goes on to reveal the winter sunshine. For now I content myself with a large cup of tea while I catch up with the news.
Not that there is much news apart from Covid and the bullying controversy surrounding Priti Patel in the UK. She was found to have broken the Ministerial Code, Boris has backed her and she keeps her job. How does that work?
It feels like a soupy kind of day so I made some cream of tomato soup for lunch. Heinz tomato soup is one of the only tinned soups I can tolerate and it takes me back to my childhood. Chilly winter days, bonfire night, soft bread and salty butter. These were the days before the Covent Garden Soup Company existed of course.
These days I make it myself and wonder why I don’t do it more often as it’s practically a storecupboard meal. Tinned tomatoes, onions and garlic gently sweated in butter, a good squeeze of tomato purée and some decent stock. That’s it. And then some cream at the end before gently reheating. It’s delicious and comforting.
The Montdomaine Festive Tasting Case with recipes, tasting notes and food and wine tasting guide has gone live so we’re off. It’s a great offer. I hope it does well. I’d be very happy to receive it myself (but of course I’m biased).
We tasted a second bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau this evening. The caviste told us the two we purchased were like ‘chalk and cheese’ as we say (he probably wouldn’t understand what I was talking about but you get my drift).
Goodness me he was right. SO very different to the one we tasted last night. Good concentration of fruit on the nose but much more tart cherry fruit with higher acidity and a much more savoury style than the other.
The vines for this one by Jean Michel Dupré are seriously old (hence the wine being called 1929) and are very densely planted. He’s based in Morgon. We sensed a teensy bit of Brett on it too which we tolerate and actually like in very small quantities.
We both had a definite preference for the one we drank last night however. The juicy ripe fruit style won hands down for us although they were both very interesting and miles away in style from the rather rasping lean affairs from the 1980’s.
