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Word on Wine

I was recently introduced to a new, local wine from Amber Valley Wines with grapes grown by Barry Lewis on his vineyard in Wessington near Alfreton.

In 2020 he made an experimental batch of wine at home, using an old technique which successfully produced an interesting wine. Barry took a bottle to the vintners at Three Choirs, who have made and bottled his wine in previous years. They liked it so much that they agreed to take a quantity of Barry’s white grapes and replicate the wine.

As it was an unusual wine they also decided to make a batch with their own grapes, resulting in their version of the wine which has since been awarded a trophy in the Wines of Great Britain 2022.

The wine is called ‘Amber’, not after the vineyard, but the technique which originated in Armenia and Georgia possibly 6000 years ago. This area of Asia is believed to be where wine making started, using indigenous grape vines of the region. The ‘Amber’ wine, sometimes referred to as ‘Golden’, is made by allowing the white grape skins to be oxidized during the fermentation of the wine. Over a period of time the skins, which turn brown, are pushed down into the wine allowing different skins to surface, giving the wine an amber/golden colour. This wine has a third of the wine aged in oak barriques and is naturally unfiltered or unfined at bottling. The wine can be a bit of a ‘marmite’ wine, as the finished dry wine will have the slight smell and taste that we sometimes associate with wine that is undrinkable.

Technical Details

Grape: Solaris and Siegerrebe Appearance: Clean, dark yellow colour Nose / Aroma: Light nose of oxidised fruit Taste: Hints of citrus with a light finish Alcohol by Volume: 11.5% Food match: Pasta and fish dishes or on its own. Available from: Amber Valley Wines, £20 per bottle (very small quantities made).

For more information about Amber Valley Wines, their tours, tastings and to buy their wines, please visit their website www.ambervalleyvineyards.co.uk. If you like wine and would like to learn more, please visit our website www.kilburnwinecircle.weebly.com or visit our Facebook page for details of our future tastings in 2022.

By David Savidge, Kilburn Wine Circle

Beer: Beer Speak

Many beer drinkers have learned to navigate a tap list or an array of pump clips to get the beer they want, but our discussion around beers usually starts and ends with “What would you like?” and “Yeah, it’s great.”

I believe that people inside the craft beer bubble vastly overestimate the public’s knowledge and interest level. The word ‘session’ is a great example. In the UK it is often used as a term to indicate a low-ABV beer. When I’m standing with a friend in front of a beer list they’ll often idly ask the meaning of an unfamiliar word, but I’ve generally lost them halfway through my explanation!

I’d guess people understand maybe a half-dozen beer terms, and all incompletely. Lager is shorthand for ‘regular beer.’ It applies to domestic, green-bottle European and Mexican beer. If someone orders a doppelbock and later learns it’s a lager, they will probably be confused. It’s nothing like Budweiser! They know IPAs will have a particular flavour profile and have learned whether they like ‘hazy’ or ‘west coast’ for ordering purposes. In most cases they won’t know the flavours they like come from hops or, if they do, they won’t know whether they come from kettle additions or dry-hopping – and they won’t care, no matter how fascinating you find biotransformation. If IPA isn’t their favourite style, they’ll know the word for the beers that are. That might be a style (porter, pilsner), but it might also be a beer (Blue Moon, Guinness).

I get why they don’t know; craft beer is insanely complex. Looking at a tap list is a bit like scrutinising a foreign language. There’s a Saison, a Vienna lager, a Helles, a Baltic porter, an ESB, something called a DDH DIPA and a wine-barrel-aged “mixed-ferm” wild ale. Really, mixed-ferm? Few beer geeks really understand that garble, I would guess.

The one thing I would say to brewers, as an emissary from real Beerlandia, is that if you do choose to put ‘session’ on your label, just know that customers won’t understand that term in the way you do. The vast majority of regular beer drinkers just want a tasty pint and the shortest conceptual route it takes to get there.

By Sean McKeown