4 minute read
Drink Bill Knott
whether the beefier spices of Jollibee’s coating were superior to the famous 11 herbs and spices in the secret blend invented by Harland ‘the Colonel’ Saunders, in 1935.
In 1965, Raymond Allen brought KFC to the UK, only to sell out in 1973 to Simon Roberts, who made a fortune. There are now 900 branches in the UK, enabling his eminent son, Andrew, to write award-winning biographies of Churchill and Napoleon. History doesn’t relate whether either great man had a penchant for deep-fried chicken, but why else would Roberts choose them as his subjects?
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Back to business. KFC scored low: F: 3; A: –5; S: 3; T: 14 minutes (no queue). Jollibee romped home with F: 4; A: 3; S: 4; T: 20 minutes (half spent queuing).
Then came the American burger bar, Five Guys, which stole the show. On arrival, we begged for water. My mouth felt as if the greasiest mountain goat had slept in it. We ordered a mixture of normal and little bacon cheeseburgers (£9.95/£7.95), which were made in front of us. One of their slogans says, ‘… there isn’t a freezer in the joint’. And we could have chosen any or all of their 15 toppings to envelop them.
The patties were trim and tasty, and the fries cooked in peanut oil (one portion feeds three) were delicious.
We sluiced it all down with Oreo and salted-caramel milkshakes. What else? Ninety minutes later, we were done, and were in bad need of beer.
DRINK BILL KNOTT GETTING THE SACK
‘Duke Ellington? What was he doing there?’ asked a confused member of our group of wine writers.
Artur Gama, the softly-spoken owner of Quinta da Boa Esperança in the hills north of Lisbon, was hosting an alfresco lunch, and one of our number hadn’t quite caught his drift. We were tasting Artur’s Arinto, an indigenous Portuguese grape variety that makes golden, citrussy wines, much favoured, so our host informed us, by … the Duke of Wellington. Following the end of the Peninsular War in 1814, he apparently brought huge quantities of Arinto back to London with him. The legendary bandleader was yet to be born.
In fact, fortified wines from what is now the DOC region of Bucelas had already achieved popularity in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare’s ‘cup of charneco’ in Henry VI, Part 2, probably came from there, but was also probably fortified, like Falstaff’s ‘sack’.
Wellington’s wines were not. They became fashionable in Victorian England under the wonderful moniker ‘Portuguese hock’, although Arinto is, so ampelographers assure us, unrelated to Riesling.
Artur’s vineyards are north of Bucelas, in a sort of amphitheatre arrangement. They benefit from the cooling influence of the Atlantic. Ripening grapes is rarely a problem anywhere in Portugal, but fostering enough acidity to keep white wines fresh often is. He also makes a gently floral, slightly spicy white from the Fernão Pires grape, formerly used solely to add aroma to red wines, rather as Viognier is used in Côte-Rôtie.
But I was there to try his new rosé, Atlantico. I wouldn’t have minded spending a few weeks on a hillside drinking rosé until Portugal went back on the green list. But we were in fact lunching in Lyme Regis, which (at the time of writing) is still a permitted destination, and we could at least gaze over one arm of the Atlantic.
Artur’s new rosé is a mistake, but a happy one. Paula, his winemaker, was away from the vineyard having a baby during harvest last year. So Artur took charge and pumped the juice from one of his vineyards usually earmarked for rosé into a 10,000-litre tank, instead of the 20,000-litre tank that would allow him to blend in the juice from another parcel of vines, as in previous years.
That tank produced a wine that he thought special enough to be worth bottling and labelling on its own, and Atlantico was born. At first glance, pale salmon pink in its clear glass bottle, it could be any of a hundred Côtes-deProvence rosés, but it is a cut above.
Made from Touriga Naçional (the port grape), local variety Castelão and a splash of Syrah, all freshened by the same Atlantic breezes as the whites, it has a distinct redcurrant-ish bouquet, like the best pink champagnes, a gentle grip on the palate and a hauntingly long finish. It is a sipper, not a glugger, and priced accordingly – just north of £20 – but, as I discovered over lunch, it is a fine match with seafood.
Serendipity in a glass.
Quinta da Boa Esperança’s wines are available from www.sommelierschoice.co.uk
Wine
This month’s mixed case from DBM Wines comprises six bottles each of two Portuguese wines: a fresh, lively vinho verde with considerably more precision and elegance than most, and a complex, fruity red with plenty of bottle age from the venerable old Dâo region, but made in a modern style. However, if you wish, you can buy 12 bottles of the individual wines.
Vinho Verde DOC ‘Vale do Homem’, Quintas do Homem, Portugal 2020, offer price £9.99, case price £119.88
Crisp, dangerously drinkable vinho verde, made from indigenous grape varieties. Perfect on its own or with grilled sardines.
Mariposa, Quinta da Mariposa, Dâo DOC, Portugal 2016, offer price £12.99, case price £155.88
Big, bold red in the Dão region’s modern style: rich damson and black-cherry fruit, supple tannins and great length.
