Oldwineaux in Europe

Years ago Alfred Wainright trekked across northern England.  He began in Saint Bees which lies next to the Irish Sea and trekked 192 miles eastward winding up in Robin Hood's Bay which sits on the shore of the North Sea.  This has become one of the most famous hikes in England. It is largely unsignposted (translate, easy to get lost), goes though the Lake District National Park, the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the North York Moors National Park.  To make the hike more manageable there are companies that will book your lodging for each night, transport your luggage daily, and even arrange for the B and B to prepare a daily packed lunch to keep you fed as you trek along.  For those of us who don't hike much there are even packages that increase the total days so you hike fewer miles each day and rest days built in along the way.  Now, who wouldn't want to take such a hike through the bucolic Lake District and over heather carpeted moors? Well, me for o...

Before heading to northern England to do some hiking I stopped in London for a few days.  It has been a couple of decades since I was there and I wanted to revisit a couple of sights.  I checked the British Museum.  Lord Elgin's Parthenon marble frieze is still there, no doubt to the consternation of Greece.  The Tower of London still houses the Monarch's crown jewels and about ten thousand other tourists and I filed past to view them on a steamy August afternoon.. But the hands-down most memorable part of my visit was to Kensington Palace.  For sure the King's and Queen's chambers were sumptuous. It's nice to be able to afford several large Tintorettos and such to adorn the walls.  The 'Queen Victoria Revealed' exhibit was a bit of a letdown.  This is no doubt because I was immersed in the lives of Queen Victoria and Albert in the recent PBS series which as usual was an over-the-top Brit production.  But what stole the show and the hearts of ...

Basically there are three types of sparkling wines made in Limoux.  Their names are cremat, blanquette, and methode ancestral.  Let's look at the 'ancestral' first because upon it rests the claim that the Limoux area was first in France to produce sparkling wine. A written record exists somewhere that the monks in the Abbey of Saint Hilare were serving it up in the year 1531.   It is bubbly, but there are some buts.  First, the fermentation is stopped before the yeast converts all the sugar into alcohol.  So the wine comes in at a little less than 7% compared to the 12.2% of champagne.  Secondly, it is made from 100% of the indigenous grape Mauzac.  We all know by now that the champagne grapes are principally Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The original bubbly dating back to 1531 had less built up carbonation in the bottle.  One reason was that the thicker and much better constructed bottle capable of handling all that pressure...