Blind Tasting Wines, With a British Fish & Chip Supper

I went to a blind wine tasting at a wine club.

At wine shows, only experienced drinkers try to guess in contests oor people who hope that randomly they might win a free bottle.

 How do you blind taste a wine and guess grape and the country of origin?

1 Colour

Usually darker means older

2 Aroma

3 County

You can check which grapes are grown in each region and allowed to be used in a local wine with a specific coutnry or region or vineyard and winery origin.

4 Bottle

Darker bottles protect wines from light. Especially white wines. But customers don't like brown bottles so bottles are made greek occasioally blue.

5 Bottle cap

Some countries favour corks. Others favour screw caps.  

We went to a blind wine tasting in St Albans.

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Peter enjoying a guess the wine blind tasting evening at wine tasting club in St Albans. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Peter at a blind wine tasting, guess the wine, four whites and four red, with a small wine tasting measure for each person, and covered bottles. Best guess wins a bottle. Tie breaker is guess the price of each bottle. you hand in your sheet with your guesses and your name. After the winnders are announced you can take the covers off the bottles. 

We had a fish and ship supper, a pre-selected choice of three meals, two kinds of fish, hake or bream, or vegan, with chips or vegetable, served in  box, by a catering company.

Fish and chips. Photo from Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Many cities have a wine tasting club or group, or wine and dine group. Wine importers and shops can arrange wine dinners or attend an event where they bring wines for you to taste and compaare and buy a bottle or a case at a discount. 

This can be free, or subsidised, or paid for. 

Finding a Wine Tasting Group

IYou can find wine clubs and events for fund raising for groups. 

Starting A Wine Tasting Group

If you cannot find one, you could start your own. Over fifties and retired people, look for a group such as at U3A (Univeristy of the third age for the retired in the UK),. Alternatively, worlwide, you can find one or start one through Meetup.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Useful Websites

https://www.meetup.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Albans

How To Identify Original, Organic and Genetically Modified Food

Plum pox resistant plum. Wikipedia.

Fruit. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I was astonished to discover that pink grapefruit was genetically modified. I prefer sweeter grapefuit. 

Old world wines from France have to be grown on root stock imported from America because it is resistant to the phyloxera beetle which destroyed almost all European the vines accidentally when the voracious citters were imported years ago.

Rose Petal Aroma

 I discovered on a recent trip to Cyprus that the sweet smelling roses whose petals are picked to perfume cordials, wines and cosmetics, last only a day. The huge perfectly formed and long lasting roses without the attractive smell are modifications. So, old fashioned roses which smell gorgeous but wilt fast, or bigger blooms which look good and last but have no aroma - now you know why that's the case and which to choose, aroma or visual appeal.

I try to buy patio rose bushes with aroma, hard to find. I identify them by sniffing them in garden centres, rather than buying from a catalogue. If I buy from a catalogue I check that they smell good as well as looking good.

A more frequent purchase is fruit. I recently discovered that the label numbers reveal what you want to know.

 I wrote this poem for myself as a reminder:

Fruit is genetically modified

Disease resistant, and more besides

I think that we can all agree

What others avoid, leaves more for me

For those who fret, or cry or sigh

It's my belief you will not die

But if you really want to know

The number eight will tell you so

To identify modified, you are are able

By reading the numbers on the label

Four digits means food's the same as before

Five digits organic, starts with eight - added more 

I wish they'd do the same to me

Make me the best that I can be

Taller, slim and young and wise

With high IQ and chameleon eyes.

-ends-

Written by Angela Lansbury Saturday 18 2022.

Comic poem on genetically modified fruit and how to identify it by Angela Lansbury 18 2022.

That's my photo of fruit. Really? Can I be sure? Can I prove it? Yes. 

My photos tend to have the warm colours of red, orange or pink somewhere, and lots of circles or curves. I have two of everything, hence the round woved placemat and the plastic placemat. My husband likes earth colours, neutral colours, but I like warmer colours, rainbow colours, so the pale brown neutral Denbyware china handled cutlery was his choice, but the blue Denbyware plate is from a couple of oddments in the same style which I bought later.

Those blue plates are Denbyware seconds in a discontinued line, same shape as the creamy brown Seville pattern. I bought the blue in a charity shop in the UK and you cannot find any more for love nor money. The brown handled cutlery is also Denbyware seconds, bought from our wedding list in 1976, again almost impossible to obtain. The plastic placemats with the oranges were bought from a shop in Singapore and I cannot find any more to match them. The chance of anybody having and mixing those two sets of discontinued Denbyware and the third odd item, the Singapore discontinued mat are near zero. 

Simplified Tip

Prefix 8 is genetically modified

Prefix 9 is organic

Useful Websites

https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/genetically-modified-foods 

Long and technical

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/organic-food-labelling-rules

Label Numbers

https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/51586/food-labeling-how-to-identify-conventional-organic-and-gmo-produce

What's that plant which smells so delicious at night?

Rangoon vine? Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
Every evening I passed a wonderful plant, pink flowers, aromatic stop-and-sniff aroma.
What is it?

Answer

I passed a lady clipping away at the edge. I passed her and stopped to look. She must have heard my footsteps and seen my shadow.

I smiled and she smiled. "Lovely plant!" I exclaimed. "Beautiful colours. What is it?"

She replied, "A 'Rangoon vine'. From Burma, now called Myanmar - next to Thailand. I am snipping away the dead parts."

I asked, "How do you know which parts are dead?"

"The dead parts have turned black."

Photo by Angela Lansbury.

She also showed me boughainvillea. "The government plants it over the bridges because it needs so little maintenance. No need to water it. It thrives on sunshine and lack of water."

She showed me more plants. "This is calamansi, as we call it. You call it lime. "

Sh moved on, "Do you like lemon grass. I'll cut you a spike of lemon grass. Smell it where it's been cut."

She kept pointing out more plants, "Over there's aloe vera. It's supposed to be good for you, if you know how to apply it. But if you do the wrong thing, it can be bad for you."

Such is life.

Useful Websites:

http://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/plant-inspiration/plants-for-evening-scent/

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.