Red ice wine from Inniskillin

 

The Inniskillin logo, named after the Irish fusilliers who were on the Canadian area near Toronto near Niagara Falls, only 15 mins, visit the Inniskillin winery and buy a tasting from 20 to 80 Canadian dollars, or 13 US to 55 US dollars  and add on a cheese plate  part of the dearer package.

Red ice wine from Inniskillin. Photo by Angela Lansbury. 

Food and drink to try by country, A-D Australia Belgium Canada, from maple syrup to Tim Tams

 Andorra

Food savoury

The national dish in wintertime is a Catalan stew called escudella. It contains either rice or pasta, pulses, vegetables  and meats such as chicken, spicy meatballs containing garlic, or sausages.

A Christmas day escudella has four kinds of meat, and large snail-shape pasta.

In summer goat cheese salad is popular.

Desserts include Crema Catalana, literally Catalan cream, Spanish-style baked custard. (It looks to me like what the French call creme brulee.)

The local variation on what I call French toast is bread or buns soaked in honey or syrup, fried and served with a dollop of jam on top or ice cream

Argentina

Austria

Mozart chocolates.

Australia

Tim tams chocolate biscuits

pavlova meringue (the national dish, also claimed by New Zealand)

Belgium

Food savoury

potato fries

Food sweet

waffles

chocolate

Drink

beer

Belize

Marie Sharpe's sauce

Brazil

Bulgaria

Canada

Food - sweet

Maple syrup.

Ice wine.

Chile

China

Czech Republic

Drink

Pilsner beer from the city of the same name.

Denmark

Danish bacon found in the UK, sliced thicker than in the USA

Danish pastry, found in the UK in pastry shops in London

Useful Websites

https://visitandorra.com/en/eating/andorran-gastronomy/

Sweet wines, pudding wines, wine tasting events UK and France

The Wine Society is holding a wine tasting event Feb 13 2016 in Stevenage. They are offering tasting of eight sweet wines with a little sweet food to match each one. The price is £55 which sounds a lot, yet they are already sold out.

Yes, this event is already sold out but other events are available throughout the year, walk around wine tasting, seated tasting events and full dinners. You need to become a member of the Wine Society (£40 a year but you get £20 off your first wine order) or to go along with a member. If you join you receive a copy of their newspaper with features about wine as well as regular emails about events and the annual catalogues of wines to buy and bits and pieces for yourself or gifts, such as tea towels, aprons, wine glasses, bottle openers, cheese and crackers and seasonal novelties such as chocolates and Xmas cakes and puddings.

I love sweet wines and here's my research into how to remember which is which.

Pudding Wines
REISLING
A popular half sweet wine is Riesling.

GEWURTZTRAMINER
The German name means spicy.
HUNGARIAN TOKAI or TOKAY
This is likely to be a dry red unless the bottle says aszul (sweet).

Fortified wines include PORT from Portugal.

Finally, the sweetest, my favourite, most expensive often a tall thin bottle, half bottle, almost candle shape, often from the USA or Canada or New Zealand.

What's it all about?
When the grapes are picked. The longer you leave the grapes the sweeter they become, like all fruit, which starts sharp early in the season.

Cabinet -grapes picked in August, just for your (kitchen) cabinet
Spatlese - spat is late, l e s e means left (on the vine), S for Spat and S for September
Auslese - imagine an O shape handwrite A, October ' left out later
Beerenauslese = 4th category, longer four syllable word, B for better, picked in November

Trockenbeerenauslese - T r o c k dry, not dry wine but dry like a raisin, extra sweet, seven syllables. Finally
Ice wine - distinctive bottle, very sweet, pricey.

The most syrup

Bad enter too - Eiswein is overtaken in sweetness.

Here's a memory aid:
Kebab Shops Are Bad To Eat.
is a well known genomic, slightly misleading because Trockenbeerenauslese is sweeter than Iceman.

Kabinet, S p a t l e s e,  Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, Eiswein (same initial letters).
This doesn't sound very politically correct, nor do I find it memorable. Words starting with the letter
K are are: Kettle, Kin, Kinky, Kinship, Kip, Kirsch, kind, kiss, kite, Kiwi, Koala,
Koalas snatch all bags to eat. Goals search all bags to eat.

K S A B E T or KSABIT.
Koalas such at big eucalyptus trees.
Koalas squat/sit /swing at big eucalyptus trees.

The Wine Society
Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, SG1 2BT.
TheWineSociety.com

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

Riesling - celebrating one of the three most popular white grapes for wine - taste in London, England, Germany, Austria, Niagara in Canada, New Zealand and more

More posts on wines have been and will be written by me. The grape Riesling is featured in this one.

Ice wine. Even a novice can identify the sweetest wine by the slim bottle. My favourite at the exhibition. 

If you are ever on holiday or work on the borders of Canada and the USA near Niagara Falls, look for this local wine. Peller Estates. Their card says, food pairing: Pate or foie gras, blue-veined cheeses and spicy Asian cuisine. Each grape gives just one drop of juice.

If you can get to Niagara -on-the-lake in Canada, the winery has a restaurant. They can match ice wine with starters - including one with chocolate tagliatelle (pasta), main courses including glazed duck, artisanal cheeses and desserts including chocolate mousse and ice wine gelee. A heavy card brochure explains. 

If you want to plan a trip or are just an armchair traveller, go to:

wwwpellericewine.com

But if you prefer dry wine. Here are some labels.

First some entertainment for everybody. Lovely labels. Like this badger with gold. For animal lovers.

 A wine maker who wants his picture everywhere, like Alfred Hitchcock in films. For people watchers.

I'd need several drinks to dream up something as memorable as this. Man on the moon. for a nightcap.

Austrian wine. Calssic wines from the Danube valley. I can hear Strauss's Blue Danube playing in my head.  

They also produce a rose. (I'll correct this when I can find the acute accent.) The label shows a lady sitting on a diving board.

Boutique Winery Clemens Strobl. www.clemens-strobl.at

Famous wines which you may have heard of:

Greywacke of New Zealand. For more, read my next blog. Grey wacke is a rock.

Wonderful Wines For Weddings, Romance & Surprise Novelties: Icewine For Valentine's Day, Wedding Wines, Cork Showing Klee; label with Dirdl

1 Squashed Wine Bottles Displaying Business Cards
The Austrian wine show at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, London showed Austria's latest wines and wine related gifts. Business address cards were displayed on a flattened bottle. You can buy these bottles and use them to serve cheese and biscuits with wine.

For a special occasion such as a wedding, anniversary, Valentine's Day, birthday, or birth of a baby, you can have your wine or champagne bottle flattened afterwards as a souvenir. I found flat-bottles.co.uk . Their charge in Feb 2014 from the website was £12+£9 postage for a bottle without label. (You remove your label and save it and stick it back afterwards.)  With labels £18 plus postage. They also do champagne and beer bottles. Other sellers offer bottles as olive trays or spoon rests, with a wine quote (old wine like old friends  better with age) and personalised. The bottle in my picture was at the Austrian wine trade show in London and was made for Weingut Hellmer by an Austrian company. I thought it was flattened by www.mth.com.at but I haven't yet found the website. The bottle itself is from Weingut Hellmer, www.winzer-hellmer.at office email office@winzer-helmmer.at tel:+43 (0)2738/3149

2 Ice Wine In Icicle Thin Bottles
I loved the ultra sweet ice wines which have to be picked at night when the weather is icy, sold in a bottle slim as an icicle. I first found this delicious wine in New Zealand, then in Canada, and did not realise it was closer to home in Europe, from Austria. My favourite eisweins were by Lang; and by Zantho whose bottle labels feature the winery's local lizard.

 Lizard Logos On Bottles Of Sweet wine - how sweet!

For the lizard logo on bottles of ice wine www.zantho.com

3 Dirndl Dress On Labels
Wandering through the show was a girl wearing a wonderful iridescent skirt. The same outfit, a folk fashion of Eastern Austria, is worn by the girl pictured on bottles of wine. The Dirndl dress has a laced corset-style bodice, a full circular skirt, and often a white puff sleeve blouse, skirt lengths varying from knee length to ankle length. You can buy these dresses in various colours for girls of all ages from babies to brides up to grannies, and co-ordinating lederhosen for boys and granddads too.

This wine with its wonderful label is brand new, so they are looking for importers to the UK. If you want to buy a dirndl dress, google dirndl or Salzburger dirndl. The pretty dirndl dress featured in the film Sound of Music so many little girls would love to have one. I met Bianca, above, the daughter-in-law of the people who run the winery.

More details of the wines from www.schmelzweine.at

info@schmelzweine

t:+43 (2715) 2435. 

4 Klee Paintings on Corks & Labels
Another novelty is a portrait from a Klee painting on a cork. Klee was an Austrian painter. The whole painting is shown on a wine label.

For the klee labels and corks check out wwww.szigeti.at

5 New Baby Bottles With Hearts and Keys For Valentine's Day and Weddings
The same company makes miniature bottles, the smallest bottles in the world, holding just a glassful of wine, 125 cl, with trinkets around the bottle neck as gifts. You can have little hearts or keys. Or anything you want to order. The bottles come in conventional colours or silver.

More Details From:

For the bubbly bomb baby bottles, with Bubbly Bomb Vienna designs, Bubbly Bomb Christmas Designs, Bubbly Bomb Wedding Designs - www.szigeti.at

You can buy the bubble bottles from Selfridges, Conran, the British Library or from the producers' website. They specialise in sparkling wines. The bottles with the hearts and keys cost about £8.99, while the ones with silver bottles and pink ribbon are about £12.99.

www.austrianwine.com

For anybody in the trade some more details:

Szigeti, Am Anger 31, 7122 Gols

T: +43 (2173) 2167 F: +43 173) 2514

E:sektkellerei@szigeti.at

W:www.szigeti.at

Contact: Hans-Peter Hofmann

Importer Grays & Feather Ltd.

Haider & Malloth make little lightweight glassy coloured printed papers to go under glasses (in German Glasuntersetzer) Vol.1.

They also double as circular business cards for their marketing staff:

Christopher Malloth MSc, marketing und Sales, Haider & Malloth OG, Am Schrandlsee 2, 7142 Illmitz, Austria.

www.weingut-haider-malloth.at

tel:+43 1 512 29 90-0

More details from:

Facebook: www.austrianwine.com/facebook

Twitter: www.twitter.com/austrianwine

Austrian Wine Marketing Board

www.austrianwine.com

Visit their Webshop shop.oesterreichwein.at

info@austrianwine.com

Next year I hope to go back to their trade show and taste the other sweet wines I missed by wineries: Fritsch; Haider & Malloth Weinkellerei OG; Etz; and Weubrueder

WINE QUOTATIONS

Finally a few quotations on wine:

A glass of wine and thou.

Drink, drink, drink. (Drinking song.)

In vino veritas.

In victory you deserve it; in defeat you need it. (Napoleon on Champagne.) 

Wine, women and song.

Angela Lansbury is the author of Quick Quotations which you can buy on line from lulu.com