Bolney Vineyard
Three days out of five this week were devoted to Wine. A visit to a couple of Vineyards on Wednesday, a day off for Wine Revision the following day, and then Friday morning the WSET Level 2 Award in Wine and Spirits Exam.
As mentioned previously the Wine studying was stressing many people out and we were all so relieved to just get the Exam over with so we could focus on our Food and Cooking. The exam itself is 50 multiple choice questions that lasts an hour. As with many multiple choice exams there are 4 potential answers to choose from and in many cases two answers were readily discountable, and therefore you had a 50/50 chance even if you were unsure of the answer. This coupled with the modest pass rate of 55% makes it sound relatively straightforward, however in the previous year there were many students who failed. One of the difficulties is that so many of the Grapes we studied produce wines that can differ in character – even from the same region – and can vary further when the same grape is used in another country in a hotter climate or at a higher altitude etc – all elements that can effect the resulting wine.
An example of a question could be “Premium wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon grape age well because they have ?” And the possible answers are
– high tannins and low acidity
– low tannins and high acidity
– low tannins and low acidity
– high tannins and high acidity
unless you have studied well you will not have the answer in your brain and therefore it becomes guesswork. The answer in this case is high acidity and tannin. Did you guess right ? In any event it is now done and we all await the results, as without a pass we will not graduate.
It did help visiting the Vineyards earlier in the week – in fact we went to two, Bolney and Ridgeview, both in West Sussex.
Simon briefs the students
Ridgeview is only make sparkling wines but some which have already won prestigious awards,it is family owned having begun its life in 1995. They are now producing around 300,000 bottles a year from 6 Vineyards. Simon Roberts who has taken over the business from his Father demonstrated am amazing passion for the business as he took us around and organised the Wine Tasting. All of Ridgeviews wines are named after London establishments and a curious fact was provided to us when asked why this is the case – the Inventor of the ‘method champenoise’ was not French but an Englishman – Mr Christopher Merret.
Mr. Merret attended the Royal College of Physicians and produced a paper in December 1662 on winemaking, describing the process of making sparkling wines involving a second fermentation at which stage sugar was added to provide the bubbles. This process was being described several years before the monk Dom Perignon began his own Champagne experiments in France. Who would have guessed it !
Yes this is the shape of a Cork before insertion
The other vineyard was Bolney which is producing still and sparkling wines all with fruity undertones – the basic style of English wines. All of the their vines are European but grafted onto original American vines as a pest called Flaxus had killed off all European vines back in the 1700s and the only Vines that were hardy enough to survive were those imported from the USA. We also learnt that there are currently almost 600 Vineyards in the UK and in 2016 they produced 4.15 bottles of wine. 66% of all bottles are sparkling, and the major two grape varieties grown are Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
The only real disappointment was that in neither of the Vineyards were we able to properly see the Winery in action, and what would have been excellent would have been to see the sparkling wine going through the process of having the frozen yeast deposit in the neck being cut away and then topped up with sugar ( dosage) and rebottled etc. We saw the machinery and the tracks the bottles would follow but no practical example.
The visits were fun though and many students ended up purchasing boxes of wine, so Leiths are now well supporting the English Wine Industry.
Did we cook anything this week ? Yes we did – it was creative duck day wherein we were obliged to Confit the legs and make a Duck Jus, but then were given free reign on how to serve the rest of the duck. My own concoction involved using the Confit meat with potato to make Duck Croquettes, and I used them as a starter, with my main course comprising of pan fried duck breast in a Honey and Chinese 5 spice glaze, accompanied by Wilted baby gem, a soya gel, crispy shards of duck skin and a deep fried egg yolk. This last component was one of the most advanced elements I had tried and it involved separating the egg and dusting the fragile yolk in flour,egg wash and panko crumbs before deep frying at 180c for a minute or so. As you can imagine the yolk is so easily broken so I was praised for attempting to be creative in this way. ( And of course I did break a few yolks on the way )
Creative Duck Day
I was pretty pleased with my dish – albeit the Jus was greasy and I really wished I had not plated with it, but we were then led around other kitchens to see what other students had produced, and there were some spectacular and beautifully presented dishes. We have some real talent at school and even if I was pleased enough with my own plate I was in awe of some of the others.
We also made a Pate De Campagne using chicken livers and minced Pork together with Pistachios. This was quite simple to prepare and really tasty, especially when served with the Onion Confit we had prepared, and the Walnut and Raisin Bread which grew to be a monster.
A bit of a strange week focusing on the Grape but next week we are back to cooking full time without the preoccupation of Wine studying on our minds. So it’s full steam ahead to week 7 and back to the dreaded and time consuming timeplans !!!