Thursday 18 October 2007

Wine

I was invited to a dinner party last Saturday, which was very nice, but of course I couldn't really insist that the hosts cook only with British food! So, I thought that I should at least take along something British and since it is fairly normal to take a bottle of wine to a dinner party I thought this would be the logical choice.

I know a very good wine shop in Edinburgh, called Peter Greens, in Marchemont. I was confident that if I was to be able to get British wine anywhere in Edinburgh, then it would be here. There has been much made of British wine recently on TV, so I didn't think it would be too difficult to get hold of some. Unfortunately, Peter Green's didn't have any, although I did learn something interesting about British wine. Apparently, the term 'British wine' refers to wine which has only be fermented in Britain, using grapes grown somewhere else and imported in. Wine that is actually produced in Britain, including the growing of the gapes, has to be called English wine. I have no idea why this might be, but could be something interesting to find out. I shall add this to the list of things to investigate!

Anyway, in the end I settled for a bottle of Elderberry wine, which was really very nice - a kind of dark, fruity red. As you can probably tell, I'm not exactly a wine buff! But, it went well with the meal (roast beef and roast chicken) and I am sure it would have been equally good on its own. It was Cairn O’ Mohr Elderberry wine and I would definitely recommend it.

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