Sweet dessert wines from Austria and Italy; and a melchior

Following on the information in one of my recent previous posts, here's more about two sweet wines. AUSTRIA
Ice wine goes with blue cheese and foie gras as well as desserts.
Called a see (sea) not a l a k e n (lake, win l a k will be masculine?) because it is so big, an inland sea.
From Austria. Neuzuidersee new ... lake; south of vienna, near the Hungarian border, in fact the border runs through the middle of the lake.

I just tried this. Sweet, marmalade aroma and taste, sticky texture (known by the technical term luscious).

If you photograph the bottle standing upright whilst you are using a smart phone you get this distorted effect.

I thought I had found a quick cure by laying the bottle down on the table. Then you can read the lower half of the label more clearly.

However, the previous upright shot brings different parts of the label to the foreground, emphasising the top.

As the label tells us, it is from (aus) Austria (Osterreich), Pradikatswein - wine with a certificate; bottled by Willi Opitz.

Eis is ice. Wein is wine.

GmbH is the German equivalent of limited company. Geshellshaft (company) met (with ) limited liability.

8,5% low alcohol because so much of the sugar is still sugar and not turned into alcohol.

0,375 l or litres is a half bottle.

More information from their website: www.williopitz.at

From the label you can now see that the maker is Willi  (like william) Opitz, and Austria is at.

This bottle was bought at Hedonism wine shop in central London after one of their tastings which are held throughout the year.

ITALY
Location where it is grown and made - Passito de Pantelleria (island of Pantelleria)
grape - Muscat blanc à petits grains -  muscat grape, white at/of little berries

If you go to Hedonism wine shop on two stories there is lots to look at as well as buy.
Have you ever seen a Melchior? It is a huge bottle, larger than a magnum (2 bottles,) or a Methuselah or a Nebuchadnezzar, or a Jereboam. The cork is huge.

You need a special corkscrew to open it. And, of course, a lot of friends to help you to drink it.

ANGELA LANSBURY, travel writer and photographer.

A Green Park picnic, then a happy hour wine tasting at Hedonism Wine retailer in London's upmarket Mayfair

Go to Green Park station, which is opposite the Ritz hotel. If you come out of Green park station on the side by the park you emerge through a wall of green plants trained up the walls.

Drinking on an empty stomach is not good any time, especially if you are planning to drive home. We planned a picnic in the park. If you have brought your own picnic, you can sit on a park bench.

We sat down beside two strange strangers, decidedly odd characters. But when we took out our picnic, one of them limped away. The other one who was sleeping, woke up, and walked off. (Was it something we said? Was it something we ate?)

I murmured, "My mother taught me: Don't stare; and Don't eat in public."

My companion retorted, 'You worry too much. Get on with your life."

"What is life if full of care you have no time to sit and stare." That's a misquotation from the poet Davis, who was a tramp. He said stand. We chose to sit. And stare. 'People watch' is the polite word for it. In front of us were deck chairs you could hire. Joggers raced passed, followed by little dogs trundling along attached to leads trying gamely to keep up with their brisk owners.

A group who could have been dancers or gymnasts, wearing black tights and tight tops stood in a circle following routines directed by a man with ropes and equipment.

A stand sold coffee. We went  back to Piccadilly to a Pret Manger so we could avail ourselves of coffee, ample seats and ground floor toilets.

If you are more interested in Happy Hours than Happy Meals, maybe Hedonism wines is more your thing.

I suggest you look around the wines which are on sale and all the wineglasses and decanters and so on before you try a drink or two or more.

We walked to Hedonism from Green Park via Berkeley Square, which holds an antiques fair in a marquee every year for a week late in September.

Hedonism Wine shop has a huge display of wines for sale in grand surroundings, chandeliers and a grand staircase with motifs. See the Enoteca machines downstairs. You can pop in and buy a glass of wine from one of the Enoteca dispensers on the wall.

Get on their mailing list to be invited to a wine tasting - mostly priced about £25. You get to meet somebody from the vineyard or area or country or importers promoting a style of wine.

This tasting and talk can take about an hour, early evening, just drinks, no food guaranteed unless specified, not usually any food, so usually we plan to go off for dinner. We will spit out the wines, as is usual at a wine tasting when you get to try half a dozen wines, and then take the train and car home.

The human body is a pipe when when you put water or wine in at the top, the mouth, the liquid travel around until gravity leads it out again. That's why establishments serving drink need toilets.

Hedonism has the most amazing ladies toilet. (The only other one I've seen equally astonishing is at a restaurant in Beaconsfield.) If you don't like the food, drink and toilets in burger bars and coffee bars, or want a change, something upmarket in the evening or for a special occasion, London has wine bars and hotels offering luxury bars, restaurants and toilets, especially in Mayfair.

Hedonism ladies toilet
Firstly you  need to be directed to get to Hedonism's toilets.  Unmarked door. Inside the TV screen is dancing and blaring, like hotel bathrooms in top hotels in the USA. In addition to the toilet and washbasin there's a bidet. Out of the wall comes a white china hand - and a few inches vertically from that is the gel dispenser.

Kosher French Wine - label translation, tasting and purchase at Hedonism Shop near Berkeley Square

"I can resist everything except temptation." Hedonism Wines quotes Oscar Wilde on their kosher Tasting notes. Who could resist the chance to taste Kosher wine?

Our group of tasters was a mixture, from the young, slim and eager to taste and talk, happy to get merry and risk getting drunk, to the mature, well-fed and silently suspicious who spat into the spittoon, determined to drive home sober. One taster demanded jovially, "Why no crackers and cheese! ("Maybe one day. But it must be matzoh," I muttered.)

Knowledge of wine varied, including someone in the business as consultant to suppliers, someone sitting WSET level 3 (Wine and spirit educational trust), and someone not yet at WSET level 1, and a couple of glamorous young Americans who drink only kosher wine, and somebody who admitted he knew nothing and asked all the questions nobody else even thought of asking.

Rogov's Guide to Israeli Wines

I presume kosher wine is made and drunk in Israel. I've seen it in London, the UK. Where else? The USA. And Canada.

I must admit that before I went to a kosher wine tasting at Hedonism's grand two storey shop - the size of small department store with a grand staircase, my knowledge of kosher wines was limited. I wanted to know if kosher wines taste different, how are they made, where can you buy them, and what do the labels tell you, and are they more expensive.

As we sat looking at the labels of the bottles I knew that the French word chateau meant castle or manor in French, and French winemakers' rules say that if you show a chateau on a label it must be the place where the wine comes from.

But what was the word starting with m - meshuval? In my mind it evokes the word meshuggah - mad - nothing to do with sugar. No, not Sh-V  - it's M-V-SH mevushal. Why would a bottle proudly claim not mevushal? It is to do with heat treating (like pasteurising) which might sterilise but could spoil the flavour. Heat treatment can be reduced to a quick zap.

Yes, I've had kosher wines at bar mitzvah's and weddings and bought them to take to orthodox friends - those kosher for Pesach wines are handy if you are ever invited to a Seder night to celebrate Passover. But I must confess my knowledge of everyday or every Friday night or festival wine was limited to the Palwin's and Kedem wines sold in the delicatessens and kosher sections in Tesco Express. My knowledge of expensive such as French kosher wine was limited to the French Rothschild wines with labels showing Picasso and Salvador Dali and other great artists. I recently bought a poster of the wine labels from the Waddesdon (now National Trust) shop at the English ancestral home of the Rothschilds north of London.
 
So it was a delight to be at a free wine tasting in central London and have the mysteries of kosher wine explained by Frenchman Jonathan. He spoke English with a delightfully amusing French accent, a Gallic grin and exuberant gestures as he showed us bottles of French kosher wine and explained their labels.

Wines go back to biblical times and beyond. I can identify a bunch of grapes and I can spot the word Kosher written in Hebrew - C-Sh-R, written left to right. The C is backwards. The letter R is also backwards - it looks like a small case R in Greek and Russian and the sign for Toys R us and in Hebrew. Also I'm sure as in the root language Aramaic (spoken by the High Priest at the temple, by Jesus, a Roman of two thousand years ago and his translator) as well as its two derivatives/links Arabic and Hebrew.

Passover is another word I've learned to recognise, even though I keep re-learning and re-forgetting Hebrew (and Russian and Greek) every year. The word passover appears in Hebrew and is translated somewhere nearby on the label in English and if you are catering for a wedding or have time on your hands and like languages there's always Google Translate for French and Hebrew.

How do you start to produce a kosher wine? If you are in Israel it must be easy. But what about a country such as France? Can anybody do it? Do you need to own a vineyard?

The good news is no, you can take an existing mass market or prestige vineyard and ask them to start producing kosher wine. Even if you are a rich entrepreneur who already owns vineyards, such as a Rothschild or even a earthy or well-connected and determined individual who has in mind big sales of the wine you can go to an existing producer of good wines and ask if they are willing to produce kosher wines. Where will you sell the wines? To caterers of big events such as weddings, retailers across the world?

If your chosen winemaker agrees, you then seek out the authority which sets out the rules and gives you inspection and the authentication. For example, in France you might choose the Beth Din of Paris. Look on the bottle label and you will see not only the words kosher in English or another language and Hebrew but the name or sign of the authenticating body.

Why would anybody want to buy kosher wine? It is not a matter of supporting Israel or Jewish businesses (although for some people it could be.) If the drinker is orthodox (or vegan) they might want a wine which does not use animal products such as egg white at the end of the process.

The wines we tasted were shown in the pictures below.

If you go to Hedonism, near Berkeley Square (remember the song, A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square) dress warmly. Hedonism is like the frozen food area of a supermarket, temperature controlled  for the comfort of the wine, not the comfort of the customer. However, if you are sitting at a tasting downstairs by the Enoteca the large tasters' chairs have a blanket on each one.

Prices? What's good value? Tastings where Hedonism charges (last one was £25) for the tasting but gives you a voucher if you buy the wines you have just tasted. Decanters at £40 were good value compared to Elsewhere. Huge choice of wines. Chance to drink a glass you would not otherwise afford from the Enoteca wine dispenser machines. (From about £2-3 for a glass of the cheapest wine.)

What's pricier?
Up to £30 from the wine dispensing machine for a glass for a special occasion to taste a wine whose bottle would be very expensive or not even available at most restaurants and wine bars. You can find kosher wines by other makers and even the same people on line, sometimes at cheaper prices. But if you are already in London or want the Hedonism experience this is a grand way to do your tasting and shopping in elegant surroundings with knowledgeable staff.

Hedonism Wines 3-7 Davies Street, London WiK 3LD
events@hedonism.co.uk
tel: 020 7290 7870

Next post is on Berkeley Square, London.