FLAVOURS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

Our Chef, Jane, enjoyed the evening as well!

Yesterday we held another one of our big wine tasting dinners in Tongham Village Hall and again it was a success both in terms of fundraising  and improving the quality of our village social life.   This time the theme was flavours of the Mediterranean and both wine and food reflected the sunnier climes of southern Spain, southern France, Italy and Greece.

For our first course we had guests dreaming they were sitting outside a café in the fortified town of Carcassonne and we served them an absolutely top-notch Blanquette de Limoux, the lovely local sparkling wine of the Languedoc.  It was a Chateau Rives-Blanques Brut 2009 which cost us £10.16 from Great Western Wines.  This beautiful sparkler, which I scored 16 out of 20, has a high proportion of the local Mauzac grape along with Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc.  We served it with some Ras-al-Hanout spiced almonds.   Almonds make a much better accompaniment than peanuts to wine and reflected our Mediterranean theme.

Houmous and pitta bread

For the second course we transported our guests to a beachside bar on the Greek island of Santorini and served them a glass of a beautiful dry white wine made with the local Assyrtiko grape.  The wine was a Hatzidakis 2010 which cost us £10.44 from Waitrose.  The grape has a lovely balanced acidity but reflects the tastes of Greece well and  matched the homemade Houmous and pitta bread that we served with it.  I scored this wine a 14.5 out of 20.



Jane prepares the Polenta stacks

We moved on to a Tapas bar in Catalonia not far from Barcelona for our third course to taste our best value wine of the evening and the first of our reds.   It was a Altos D’Olivia Gran Reserva 2004 which cost us £7.95 from FromVineyardsDirect.  This red tastes beautifully mellow and mature and was a real hit with our guests.  I thought it was a good 14+ out of 20 wine, which for an £8 bottle is very good.   This wine was served with a dish that Jane used to prepare for her restaurant – a roasted pepper and sundried tomato polenta stack – a dish that really gave us the colours and flavours of the mediterranean.



Caponata and Salami

Half way through our wines, we moved on to Inspector Montalbano country and the Island of Sicily.  For this course we served wines from one of Sicily’s best producers – a Shezerade Donnafugata Nero D’Avola 2010, which cost us £11.96 from Noel Young Wines.  This is a wine with some well-balanced complexity although some of our guests found it a bit alcoholic.  I scored this red 16 out of 20.  This was served with a Sicilian classic, Caponata, which is an olive tomato and aubergine dish, and some salami.  Jane’s preparation of this dish was perfection.

Serving the Moussaka

Our main course was beautifully cooked moussaka and for this we had to imagine we were in a little Greek taverna.  With this main course we served a modern organic Greek wine.  The Organiki Tsantali Private Collection 2006 made with Cabernet Sauvignon grapes cost us £8.54 from Waitrose.  Unfortunately, one of the bottles was corked but I quickly retrieved another one to keep our customers satisfied.  A pleasant wine and value at this price.

For the cheese course we had to imagine we were on a luxury yacht sailing around the Mediterranean.  The wine was a Mas Belles Eaux Les Coteaux 2008, which was a Languedoc Syrah, Grenache, Mouvedre blend.  This wine costs £11.95 from FromVineyardsDirect.  I really like this wine as it is not so sweet as most wines from this region.  Robert Parker scores this 91/100 but I was enjoying myself too much to score it myself!    The cheeses were all from Italy via Waitrose – a Tallegio that almost everyone appreciated, a Sardinian Pecorino and a Dolcelatte.   It made for a well-balanced cheeseboard.

Orange Cake

Our final destination, before returning in our minds to a cold and wet Tongham, was the Greek Island of Patras.   Jane made some of my favourite Mediterranean Orange cake for which I gave you the recipe in an earlier blog.  It was served with some homemade Seville orange marmalade and as usual was a stunning end to the meal.  We served it with an unusual sweet red dessert wine that went well with the sweet citrus flavours of the cake – a Kourtaki Mavrodaphne of Patras which costs £4.86 at Waitrose.



The evening ended with some coffee and the raffle.   Another great Tongham Village Hall evening!    Special thanks to Jane for her culinary efforts and Bob Monk for the loan of the fridges and his hard work as waiter and kitchen hand throughout the evening   Tongham wouldn’t be the same without these two characters. Thanks also to others such as Ruby and Patricia who also helped us during the evening.

Our long taverna type table

I'd better sign-off now and get busy selecting some good value and interesting South American wines and creating the menu for our next TVH wine tasting but in the meantime I must thank all of our guests whose donations to the raffle and meal helped raise much needed funds for maintenance of our Victorian Village Hall building.  Many of the photos featured in this blog as usual come from Clive Greenfield who also proved a dab had at washing-up.

If you want some of Jane's recipes for the food served at our Flavours of the Mediterranean wine tasting dinner then follow the links below to her very successful Thermomix blog.
Marmalade. 
Caponata.
Moussaka.
Hummus and Pitta Bread.

Our seven Mediterranean wines

If you live in or near Tongham, don't forget that our local wine tasting group, Tongham tasters, meets every month to blind taste six wines.  Our next evening is on Friday march 16th when we'll be tasting six Italian wines with some homecooked pasta dishes.  Details of how to join us are here on the Wine Circle page.