Travel Archives - Page 2 of 8

After a heavenly Hereford cider trail a true taste of terroir at The Riverside

As a hardened traveller there’s nothing I like better than a detour. On a recent road trip around West Cork I couldn’t resist motoring a few miles off-piste to check out eerie Coppinger Court, a ruin almost since it was built in Tudor times. Let’s call such a diversion ‘The Single Track Road Quest of the Tractor Perilous’.

Down in Herefordshire the roads to the (unruined) St John at Shobdon were an easier prospect. Six miles north west of Leominster we turned left at at sleepy Mortimer’s Cross, in 1491 site of a particularly bloody Roses battle, won by the Yorkists. Quite soon we were driving down an avenue of limes to what from the outside looked the plainest of country churches.

Inside, though, you’ll discover England’s most complete rococo ecclesiastical experience, fashioned by one of the architects of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill around 1800. White wedding cake meets Countess’s boudoir. Simon Jenkins in his England’s 1,000 Best Churches gives it 4 stars. We loved it, too.

But not as much as we loved our evening’s destination, The Riverside, 15 miles up the Lugg valley at Aymestrey. It’s a 16th century sheep drovers’ inn set in a river loop, its hillside veg terraces steepling into wooded hills, for all the world like some English equivalent of the Dordogne. And the food self-taught chef/patron Andy Link is turning out is deeply rooted in his own Herefordshire terroir.

We dined on local snails, faggots, rare breed Hereford beef, a sweet cicely parfait, finishing with nettle cake with lemon and thyme syrup, matched with ice cider. All this and it still felt like a proper pub where you could prop up the bar with a pint of Wye Valley Brewery’s Butty Bach.

You can understand how in 2002 it was voted Great British Pub Awards ‘Best Sustainable Pub’. Andy took us up to their organic growing plots, hewn out of the hillside during lockdown by himself and manager George Parkes. Between here and the half-timbered pub proper is the row of three quirky timber lodges, in one of which, Beechenbrook, we stayed, relishing the combination of under-stated luxury, such as underfloor heating, and rustic seclusion.

The main buildings house further, more traditional (and dog-friendly) bedrooms. The bar areas are solidly cosy with garlands of hops and a wood-burner. There’s a wealth of walks all around. We chose along the river, promised the possibility of otters and kingfishers. Alas, no sightings. As a base the location is brilliant, foodie Ludlow 10miles to the north, Hereford 20 miles to the south … and a wealth of traditional cider producers to visit.

The apple of our eye in the midst of the Mappa Mundi

It seems fitting to begin our Cider Pilgrimage in the heart of Hereford Cathedral. Let’s call it a windfall moment as we strain to decipher a medieval Christian world view drawn across a stretched sheet of calf skin… and discover apples. So apt in a county of orchards.

This is the Mappa Mundi, created around 1300 by one Richard Oldingham. It is the only complete world map of its time to have survived and its 1.59 x 1.34m canvas is teeming with illustrated wonders representing geography and history, hell, heaven and the path to salvation. Quite disorienting. Nothing is in our ‘right’ order. Jerusalem is at the centre, the British Isles in the bottom left hand corner and at the top is the East – home to Eden and expected site of Christ’s second coming. Hereabouts, in ‘India’, are sketched two robed figures attending to an apple tree, one shaking a bough with a stick, the other sniffing and gathering fruit. Are they harvesting?

These are the Gangenes, described on the Mappa as a people who lived near the River Ganges and survived only on the scent of apples. Indeed, so the myth goes, should they smell anything offensive they immediately perish. Would that include Strongbow, one of those commercial ciders that have devalued a great traditional tipple?

*A traditional orchard. Image: Fred Friggens*

In search of cider with the artisan masters

We are in Herefordshire in search of the real deal. If the immaculately mounted Mappa Mundi takes our breath away, so too do the remarkable craft ciders and perries we encounter in their heartland. Sorry, Somerset.

The likes of Oliver’s, Littler Pomona, Ross-on-Wye, Gregg’s Pit, Artistraw and Newton Court are all small producer standard bearers, well worth a visit. There’s a true local pride in their achievements. The tourist board even promote Herefordshire Cider Circuits, recommending orchards along three cycling routes. Our visits are by car and we are circumspect sippers with narrow lanes to negotiate.

Just to stand in an orchard is to feel at one with nature and a unique heritage. All a bit farm gate yet, but cider tourism is taking off. Ross have their own on-site pub, the Yew Tree, while Newton Court have launched a purpose-built visitor centre, featuring a restaurant, cafe, farm shop and tour hub. This bright, airy space is a major investment for the Stephens family, who have run this 157 acre regenerative farm since 1991. I’d recommend ordering the locally sourced pork, apple and leek pie and sharing a bottle of Panting Partridge, their flagship perry (aka ‘pear cider’), or their acclaimed sparkling cider, Black Mountain.

After which joining one of their cider tours might be hard to resist. We wandered into the organic orchards with Paul Stephens, who took over the day-to-day running of Newton Court from his father Tom. Sheep graze among the pear trees, while he tells us of the impact on perry’s taste of terroir and individual pear varieties – with delightful names such as Flakey Bark, Betty Prosser, Hendre Huffcap, Butt and Thorn. He also raises the perils of fireblight, a bacteria that can wipe out trees that have taken decades to mature. Sudden attacks, no known protection.

*Tom Oliver imparts his apple-driven wisdom*

The same grim prognosis is repeated seven miles away at Oliver’s Cider and Perry, near the delightfully bucolic sounding hamlet of Ocle Pychard. Here we are granted an audience with ‘cider royalty’ Tom Oliver, not that you’d guess his global renown from the rustic surroundings and his understated manner. This man is a legend across the United States. Not in his long-running role as tour manager/sound engineer for The Proclaimers but as an ambassador for cider and perry, a mentor for so many aspiring cider makers. Nearing retirement age, he shows no sign of slowing down.

His is a working farm, the shop only open for three hours on Saturdays, but what a wealth of options to buy. Inside the former hop barn that is now his barrel store he treats us to one of his treasures. 20 years ago a single Coppy pear tree remained on the planet, tracked down in a remote spot by Oliver. Grafts have created young siblings but they are under threatened from the dreaded fireblight. So when we taste a work in progress sample of single varietal Coppy, a sherberty work in progress, from the ancient tree that produced barely half a barrel last harvest, we are tapping into something fragile and magical.

Another amazing cider destination In the rolling hills beyond Bromsyard is cutting edge Little Pomona. It was set up by James Forbes and his wife Susanna, who sadly died last September after a long cancer battle.

Hops, cherries and quince are all incorporated into ciders that push the boundaries. If you’re biking or ensuring you drive responsibly try their Hard Rain Hot Pink. Just 3.4ABV, it’s a ciderkin, made from the second pressing of apples with the addition of water, hops and blackcurrant. Check ahead for opening times.

Hereford Cathedral – an intimate voyage of discovery

Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruitful abundance, with gardens and orchards in her remit. The 18th century diarist and gardener John Evelyn published an appendix to his great book on trees under that name – “concerning fruit-trees in relation to cider the making and several ways of ordering it.” 150 years later The Herefordshire Pomona was one of the first attempts to fully catalogue the existing varieties of English fruit. Many of the apples and pears illustrated can be found precariously today.

There’s a rare copy in the Chained Library of Hereford Cathedral, the largest such library left in the world, containing some 1,500 books, dating from around the year 800 to the early 19th century, including 227 medieval manuscripts. In the early 17th century, when the bookcases you see today were made, chained libraries were commonplace, protecting the precious word. It is a fitting lead-up to the Mappa Mundi (adults £7.50) in its special annexe, but the surprisingly intimate Cathedral is packed with other delights.

A more whimsical fixture is the ‘extra leg’ of the 14th century knight Sir Richard Pembridge (died 1375), a veteran of the battles of Crecy and Poitiers. When his alabaster tomb was constructed, the effigy correctly showed him wearing the Garter insignia only on his left leg. The right leg was damaged during the Civil War. A replacement wooden leg wrongly included a garter, so a new alabaster leg, without a garter, was commissioned in the 19th century. The wooden leg has since been reunited with his tomb thanks to a benefactor.

Downtown– what lies beyond the Mappa Mundi?

IF you can’t get out to the orchard hinterland there are great places in Hereford city to sample. Our favourite is undoubtedly The Hereford Beer House. We went in search of a West Coast IPA but there was a choice of four ciders in tap, including Oliver and Little Pomona, and a general feel of cider country bonhomie.

You can buy a goodly selection of bottles to take away at the Museum of Cider, just across the river in Pomona Place (what else?). A Trust took over the former Bulmer’s cider factory and it opened in 1981. The family portraits remain in the old boardroom but it’s the ‘champagne’ cellars dating back to 1889 that evoke the legacy. Descend and you’ll find the racks where employees turned the heavy bottles of sparkling cider – what the French call degorgement.

On the main floor you can trace the worldwide history of cider. There’s a 300-year-old French Beam Press and a collection of watercolours depicting the different types of apples and pears, but the star attraction is a rare collection of English lead crystal cider glasses dating from 1730, when cider went head to head with wine as the toffs’ drink of choice.

An inspiration for Elgar’s Enigma Variations

The celebrated composer Sir Edward Elgar lived in Hereford between1904 and 1911 and there’s a statue of him and his bicycle in the Cathedral Close. If you cross the River Wye from here you’ll encounter another, tinier statue with the Cathedral as a backdrop. It’s of Dan, a bulldog belonging to its organist, a friend of Elgar’s. The story goes that they were walking along the riverbank one day when the dog fell in down the steep bank.

He paddled to a place where he could pull himself out, and shook himself vigorously. “I bet you can’t make a tune out of that!” was the organist’s challenge. Elgar took it up and the melody he wrote became part of the Enigma Variations. Let’s call it a Soggy Dog Story.

It’s all down in black and white

There’s wooden heritage aplenty in the rolling countryside of Herefordshire, notably in the timber-framed ‘Black and White Villages’. Devotees can even indulge in a 40 mile circular trail (above), kicking off in Leominster, an ancient market town whose Priory Church of St Peter and St Paul is another four star for Simon Jenkins. The edifice with its imposing Norman tower is actually the remains of a monastic settlement set on the edge of town. Don’t miss one oddball object in the north aisle – the last ducking stool to be used in England. In 1809 Jenny Pipes was ducked in the local River Lugg. Alas, her crime remains a mystery.

Fact file

Neil stayed at The Riverside Inn Aymestrey, Herefordshire. HR6 9ST. 01568 708440.

Full tourist information from Visit Herefordshire.

Check with individual cider makers for visiting times. If you want to explore further the delicious world of cider and perry CAMRA have published a brace of books I heartily recommend: Modern British Cider by Gabe ‘The Ciderologist’ Cook (£15.99) and Perry – A Drinker’s Guide by Adam Wells (£17.99).

21 July 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Books, Travel, Wine

Exploding the minerality ‘myth’… plus expert guides to great wine regions

You wait all your days for a debunking of the minerality’ in wine and then two come along. Both books, just published by the Academie du Vin Library, take a genuine tilt at accepted assumptions of terroir.

The subtitle of Taste The Limestone, Smell The Slate by Alex Maltman (£35) is a mite off-putting: “A geologist wanders through the world of wine” Did my favourite wine writer, Andrew Jefford, put me at ease with his summation? ‘“Rocks and soils haunt our thinking about wine. We see links, sniff origins, taste connections, digest differences. Is this cause and effect – or fantasy? Alex Maltman is ghostbuster-in-chief. This wide-ranging and clearly reasoned book shines a torch through cobwebs.”

Cobwebs initially entangled me as I waded through Professor Maltman’s links between terroir, geology and microbiology, but I was gripped once he put into scientific context wine writing’s insistence that minerals in the vineyard bedrock contribute to the eventual taste in the bottle.So many other factors are at play. His conclusion: ‘minerality’ is a pseudo-science.

Inescapable mind. In a recent copy of Decanter magazine Beverley Blanning MW, author of a new book on Wines of the Loire Valley, reviewed eight Sancerres from that limestone-clay terroir with a hint of flint in the east of the region. The Domaine Vacheron sample is spared, but in her short evaluations of the other seven ‘mineral’ features seven times, ‘minerality’ three.

So what does have a major impact according to Maltman? Check out the chapter, Four Elephants in the Wine Room”. The four key factors are soils, rootstock selection, choice of yeasts, and ambient factors affecting taste perceptions.

Book number two, which wields its debunking scythe much further, is Sunny Hodge’s The Cynic’s Guide To Wine (£25). As the title suggests it’s a rational antidote to romantic grape tosh, making use of the writer’s scientific background (in mechanical engineering) and running his two London wine bars – Diogenes the Dog and Aspen & Meursault.

Hodge is vituperous about the bullshit of wine speak: “‘The more we talk about wine in that way, the less we learn about wine. The more we understand why this tastes so “green-appley” because of the natural malic acid; why your Merlots and Cabernets taste so peppery, because of the pyrazines… I know it’s very technical food talk, but the more we talk about it normally, the less smoke and mirrors there are.” It’s a more approachable book than Maltman’s, ranging wider. I particularly liked the final chapter exploring taste perceptions and neurology.

I also enjoyed the sense of genuine personal engagement in the writing. Take this passage after he has pointed out that almost all rocks and minerals are essentially tasteless and odourless: “It is hard to believe that we conjured aroma associations with certain metals and rocks out of nowhere. I can myself recall the most distinct smell of lead from an unfortunate turn of events in Peckham.

“In my early twenties (he is now 35) I ended up with a couple of lead air rifle bullets lodged in the back of my head and jaw when I was the victim of a clichéd London robbery following a skate filming session… To this day the smell and taste of that alien object under my skin is unforgettable. How is possible that smell didn’t exist?”

*Iberian spectrum – Priorat in Catalunya*

After such polemics a recognisable vineyard journey from one of the great English wine writers. Sarah-Jane Evans’ The Wines of Northern Spain has long been an essential guide to regions that are among my favourites. Now seven years on comes The Wines of Central and Southern Spain (Academie du Vin Library, £35), which takes us from from Catalunya to Cadiz via the Levante and ends on the wilder shores of the Balearics. Trendy Sierra Gredos doesn’t make the cut, but the omission is slight when there is much else to savour in this encyclopaedic evaluation of arguably Europe’s most interesting wine country. In particular I love they way she tackles the recent transformation of traditionally hidebound sherry country in Andalucia,

Also new in the same series is The Wines of California (£35) by Elaine Chukan Brown. It is an in-depth look at what is the world’s fourth largest producer of wine, focusing not just on her base, Napa, and Sonoma but other viticulture areas emerging against the challenge of climate change, drought and the threat of wildfires.

The book, heavyweight in every sense at nearly 500 pages, is divided into three major sections. The first presents the key ideas that help make sense of California wine as a whole, including the history of the state’s vineyards and how the topography delivers California’s climatic and soil conditions. The second tackles each major region in turn, spotlighting the most significant and interesting producers. A final section discusses the future of the industry across the state.

The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide Series offer a pocket-sized, well-illustrated wealth of information that can enhance a road trip or stay in any region. The latest volumes, each just £12.99, live up to that billing – Tuscany by Paul Caputo and Rioja by Fintan Kerr (each £12.99). Both had me scanning cheap flights over.

Image credits: Chateauneuf du Pape galets (Megan Mallen); Sarah-Jane Evans and Sunny Hodge (Academie du Vin Library); Priorat (Antonio M Romero Dorado) and Sanlucar (Til F Teek).

18 July 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Restaurants, Travel

What’s your beef, Brian Boru? Hawksmoor Dublin, Clontarf Castle and a Viking bloodbath

I’d wager Brian Boru was a prime steak man. As High King of Ireland you wouldn’t go into bloody battle against the Vikings on a plant-based diet. The hero’s full name indeed, Brian Boruma, means ‘Brian of the cattle tributes’. Owning beef on the hoof was a boost in the medieval bragging rights.

Flash forward a thousand years to a new invader from across the sea. Hawksmoor has landed on Dublin’s College Green to a hero’s welcome. The upmarket UK steak restaurant sets out its stall on its Dublin website: “Beef from small community farms from all corners of the island, grazing cattle on rotation on fertile Irish soil.” Apparently it has been easier to source premium grass fed, properly aged stuff in Ireland than for sister ventures in New York and Chicago.

Gazing up at the dramatic domed ceiling we were just glad they have also sourced such an amazing venue. So many of these vast bank recalibrations don’t quite get it right (witness the recent Cut and Craft in Manchester). Here the petrol blue of the bar stool leather and the velvet banquettes is a classy match to all the wood panelling and Corinthian columns. Co-founder Will Beckett reckons it is the most striking of the 13 Hawksmoors (seven in London). It was at the 10th birthday party of their Manchester venue that Will invited us over. Impossible to resist and the food and service more than lived up to Hawksmoor’s own 20 year heritage.

Of course, history is in these halls too. This was the great Bank of Ireland established in 1835 by Daniel O’Connell, ‘The Liberator’. They named Dublin’s main thoroughfare after this astute politico, who probably turned over in his hallowed grave when for a while the premises hosted a branch of Abercrombie and Fitch.

I like to think the ghost of Brian Boru was at our side as we shared a Chateaubriand with beef dripping fries and creamed spinach after starters of native lobster and roasted currach scallops. Did he enjoy the Raul Perez Mencia red from Bierzo? We certainly did. He wasn’t having any of my Cherry Negroni.

We live the Castle dream near the site of an epic battle

In 1014 Brian Boru smashed a Norse-Leinster alliance at the great Battle of Clontarf, losing his own life in the process. 10,000 others fell in the slaughter that ended Viking rule in Ireland. Hours before our Feast of Hawksmoor we had visited Boru’s Well in Clontarf. The ‘Well’ is a drinking fountain erected in 1850 to mark where the Irish warriors refreshed themselves before triumphing on the battlefield. Allegedly.

A further bovine footnote: Clontarf, pronounced Cluain Tarbh in ancient Gaelic, translates as ‘Meadow of the Bull’ because the waves crashing into the beach were said to sound like a panting bull. Hard to reconcile all this with today’s affluent coastal suburb.

With its view across to the Docks and the distant Wicklow Mountains the seafront promenade is perfect for joggers and dog walkers. Keep heading north and you’ll cross a wooden bridge that takes you to Dollymount Beach with its 5km of dunes and North Bull Island Nature Reserve, a sand spit described as a bird watcher’s paradise. Clontarf village has its share of boutique shopping and people-watching cafes.

Walk inland, though, along Castle Avenue past that Well and you come upon a historic castle almost incongruous among the posh new residences that hem it in. Clontarf Castle was erected some 150 years after the battle as part of Dublin’s outer defences and in the early 14th century passed into the hands of the Knights Templar, who made it a monastery. In the 17th century John Vernon, quartermaster of Cromwell’s invading army acquired it and for 300 years it was the family home. One of its chatelaines, Dolly Vernon, captivated Handel, who stayed here prior to the world premiere of the Messiah in Dublin. On a further musical note the first track on Thin Lizzy’s debut album is called The Friendly Ranger at Clontarf Castle.

The building Handel saw (and JMW Turner painted) is no longer there. The Vernons hired the gloriously named architect William Vetruvius Morrison to rebuild it in 1837. This is the Gothic/medieval style structure that may well have inspired Dracula’s Castle. Creator Bram Stoker grew up close by.

*The lobby incorporating medieval stonework*

Luxurious, arty and handily placed – Clontarf Castle Hotel

Today’s Castle has metamorphosed further as a luxury four star hotel, incorporating a contemporary wing housing its 111 bedrooms. The mod cons in our top floor Junior Suite were state of the art but, aided by the presence of a four poster bed and mullioned windows, it felt of another age.

This was more than compounded by the public rooms beyond the soaring lobby where the family motto has been retained on a banner, “Vernon Semper Viret” (Vernon Always Flourishes). It’s all a mixture or old and new, so alongside the suits of armour and Boru references, each floor of the hotel offers a riot of contemporary art. Often quite quirky. ‘Owls with hats’ outside our suite, particularly so.

*Our junior suite with* *its four-poster*

In the absence of old family retainers, the hotel staff were terrific. From the front desk man who provided us with in depth guides to the Castle and wider Clontarf to the old school barman who poured a perfect Guinness for me in the Knight’s Bar. A shame not to be able to dine in Fahrenheit, the lauded main restaurant, but Hawksmoor called.

One reason for choosing Clontarf, its amazing history apart, was easy public transport access to central Dublin, not the easiest place to park in. It was a 15 minute walk to the DART commuter line and a 10 minute ride to Parnell Street Station. What better appetiser for the glorious meal ahead than a stroll through the grounds of Trinity College.

The other reason: Clontarf is only a quiet 15 minute drive back to Dublin Ferry Port. Time on your hands first? Half an hour north of the Castle is breezy Howth with a fine headland walk and great fish dining options. On past evidence I’d go for lobster at the upmarket King Sitric restaurant with rooms. The name commemorates Norse king Sigtrygg Silkbeard, an arch-rival of Brian Boru. Defeated but lived to tell the tale and created Ireland’s first coinage. A history lesson there.

Factfile

Neil Sowerby travelled to Dublin with Irish Ferries. Short break return fares to Ireland start from £214. He took the Dublin Swift, a high speed catamaran which travels from Holyhead to Dublin in just 135 minutes, making it the fastest Irish Sea crossing. It’s the best ferry experience I can recall with a highly efficient boarding process for our car at either end. To be admired too Irish Ferries’ quest for greater sustainability; the Swift has transitioned to using Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil, a fossil-free biofuel, as an alternative to conventional diesel.

Highly recommended for this trip is an upgrade to Club Class from £18 per person. It includes priority vehicle boarding, an executive lounge bar (get there early to snap up a panoramic window seat), free wifi, complimentary soft drinks and snacks (and wines on the Irish Sea and Dover-Calais routes).

If you fancy a full meal check out Boylan’s Brasserie, which offers a range from a Full Irish Breakfast at 16.95 euros to mains at 21 euros.

Clontarf Castle Hotel, Castle Ave, Clontarf East, Dublin 3, D03 W5NO, Ireland. +353 1 833 2321.

Hawksmoor, 34 College Green, Dublin 2.

For tourist information go to Visit Ireland and Visit Dublin.

14 June 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Aishling Moore’s golden touch and the wonder of West Cork wasabi

It’s commonplace these days to chart provenance on a menu. At Goldie one supplier name hopped off the list in front of me – Singing Frog Gardens. Alas, no sweetly croaking amphibians feature at Aishling Moore’s Cork restaurant famed for its ‘gill to fin’ sustainable fish cookery. But wasabi root grown in the West Cork backwoods does. It’s a speciality of the Gardens’ Alex Gazzaniga, a cultivator of rare and pungent salads and vegetables not traditionally native to Ireland (or many habitats in Europe, come to that). The name comes from the raucous frogs attracted to the damp forest setting suited to growing wasabi, brassica cousin to horseradish and mustard. Ironically the root thrives in a moist microclimate that can also encourage potato blight.

My Dublin-based colleague, the talented Caitríona Devery, has written two articles for Ireland Eats (wasabi and gardens) on this reclusive market gardener, who moved to Ireland from England 15 years ago and now supplies innovative indie restaurants with what greengrocers used to call ‘queer gear’. Wasabi seems a given for Takashi Miyazaki, guru behind Cork city’s Ichigo Ichie and Miyazaki. He was among Alex’s first customers; Aishling with her almost Japanese attention to fish is another perfect fit.

No question the meal of our recent Irish road trip was at Goldie on Oliver Plunkett Street across the road from equally casual stablemate Elbow Lane. Before seafood called Aishling honed her cooking skills at this fire-led, meat-centric micro-brewhouse (which also name-checks Singing Frog among the butchers and maltsters).

Cork-born Aishling opened Goldie when she was 24, just six months before the pandemic. From the start she was determined to create a sustainable, changing menu from what was landed daily on Ballycotton quayside. Nothing of the available catch was to be wasted, in particular those fish previously thrown back into the sea. The approach is called Whole Catch, the name of the slim volume she published in 2024, the year after she was named Ireland’s Young Chef of the Year. No glossy images, just Nicky Hooper’s characterful illustrations. These include, inside front and back, the golden salmon-shaped weathervane that has crowned the hilltop St Anne’s Church, Shandon since the 1750s and gives its name to the restaurant.

Whole Catch is in essence a pared back primer, charting how to handle fish from the whole raw state to the plate. The recipes are not afraid of powerful global flavours, but the freshest Irish raw materials never seem smothered. Surprises include her favouring the butterflied tails of round fish. From the small plates section we tried the hake tail schnitzel with gherkin and celeriac remoulade and soy cured egg yolk. Utter delight until it was surpassed by the chicken and butter miso sauce that perfectly partnered the firm, sweet flesh of pan-fried John Dory, an unexpected ‘luxury’ fish.

A pudding that is approaching a similar signature dish status is the caramelised white chocolate, Achill Island sea salt, milk sorbet, with a buckwheat tuile. Proof of the sophisticated culinary intelligence at work. Pleasure principle counterpointing the sustainability crusade. Goldie’s Michelin Bib Gourmand is throughly deserved. Surely a star must be close.

Chatting afterwards, Aishling distanced herself from the application of meat butchery/charcuterie techniques as espoused by Australian chef Josh Nyland, whose own manifesto, The Whole Fish Cookbook, echoes hers. “Lots of folk make the connection, but I’d never even heard of him when we opened Goldie. Others compare us with Lir up on the north coast of Ireland, but they follow the Nyland route, making their own fish-based charcuterie. The nearest I’ve got to that is some fish jerky!”

Lir chef patron Stevie McCarry made it to the final of the Great British Menu 2025. The closest Aishling has got to celebrity across the Irish Sea was a couple of appearances on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, the last in November, to celebrate World Fish Day. On her July debut she cooked the Shime Mackerel recipe you’ll find in Whole Catch – which I intended to replicate (the main image is Channel 4’s). It involves a 10 hour sashimi-style marinade of salt, mirin, brown rice vinegar and, crucially, dried kombu kelp (Irish and Japanese in one seasoning). Soy and wasabi to accompany. West Cork wasabi had kindly been posted to me and had to be grated quickly to guarantee its kick. Alas, I was called to a France for a week before I could source the freshest of mackerel, which this dish required. So, to avoid drying out, the surprisingly delicate wasabi was summoned to perk up some hot smoked salmon before my departure.

On my return I bought a couple of Cornish mackerel; from Out of The Blue in Chorlton, Manchester, substituting horseradish from our garden for the wasabi. On Sunday Brunch beetroot ponzu and pickled ginger were the mackerel’s sidekicks. Just some plain roasted beetroot for me, but the dish was drop dead gorgeous.

A major Aishling inspiration is another Brit expat, master fish smoker and ocean activist Sally Barnes, who has been curing wild salmon and other fish at her Woodcock Smokery near Skibbereen since 1979. Aisling confirms: “Conversations with her have massively influenced the way I think and how I perceive things.” At her venue, The Keep, Sally runs artisan masterclasses and occasional dinners. As I write this the guest chef at the latest event is Nina Matsunaga of the Black Bull, Sedbergh, Cumbria, a huge favourite of mine (read my review).

Fact file

In Cork city we stayed in two hotels – The Montenotte Hotel, Middle Glanmire Road, Montenotte, Cork, T23 E9DX, Ireland. +353 21 453 0050.and The River Lee Hotel, Western Road, The Lough, Cork, T12 X2AH, Ireland. +353 21 425 2700.

Whole Catch (Blasta Books, 17 euros plus postage) is available from the Goldie website.

1 June 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Beer, Travel, Wine

Nightingale season, radical seeds and troubled dreams in sparkling Sussex

Never meet your heroes, they say. Does it help if they are not at the very top of your worshipful bucket list? Take this random trio – folk singer and nightingale champion Sam Lee, revolutionary political philosopher Thomas Paine and Limerick-born Dermot Sugrue, described by his wife as the ‘Don Corleone of English wine’. I’m a big fan of all three, all of whom were integral, in their different ways, to a spring visit to Lewes, East Sussex.

The roots of our big wedding anniversary break lay in Sam’s Singing With Nightingales project. It felt like the perfect present for a spouse in tune with all things avian and Shakespeare (the special theme of our chosen night in a ‘secret’ Sussex wood).

Each spring several thousand nghtingales make the long migration from Sub-Saharan Africa to reside in southern England and indulge in all-night mating ritual. The chance to hear the song, from the male only, long celebrated in myth, poetry and folk culture was irresistible. Sam, who has himself written a book on the bird, describes it as “an act of immersive theatre and ritual, both otherworldly and yet something we might collectively have done since the dawn of humans. This communion with the more than human world reminds us that we are nature and nature is in us all.

Our unique experience encompassed a bell tent for the night, chummy campfire supper, a lutanist, Shakespeare from a Globe Theatre story teller and a song plus eco rallying cry from charismatic Sam; then towards the witching hour a single file promenade into the dark woods. The goal, achieved – to hunker down by a hedge to eavesdrop on the ecstatic piping of a nightingale. So few left, a 90 per cent decline in the UK since the sixties, so it felt a magical encounter. All too brief. What was it Keats concluded his great Ode with? “Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:— Do I wake or sleep?”

At the close, in the deep darkness, Sam and his musical guests duetted softly with the invisible bird. You can get a feel from a 2021 EP how it sounds. Nothing, though can match the real thing. Each year the window of opportunity is short, scarcely six weeks. I highly recommend making the trek to Sussex (or a newer site in Bedfordshire)). Just 40 folk are allowed for each session.

The Trouble with Dreams, the beauty of English bubbles

The same number, 40, is the guest maximum for Sugrue Sundays, a series of alfresco summer lunches at Sugrue South Downs winery, eight miles north of Lewes. After an aperitif among the vines, a four course lunch is cooked over vine cuttings and served en plein air with views of the Bee Tree Vineyard and the South Downs. The August 10 lunch sold out in a flash, understandably with kitchen legends Mark Hix and Henry Harris doing the cooking (I’m on a waiting list).

The wines, made by Dermot Sugrue, are an equal attraction. His Champagne method The Trouble with Dreams was recently named Britain’s best sparkling wine, ahead of the likes Nyetimber and Wiston, both of which once benefitted from Dermot as their contract winemaker.

Since 2023 the genial Irishman, now 47, has been master of his own vinous destiny, thanks to backers such as actor Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey and Paddington) and Robin Hutson, founder of The Pig boutique hotel collection (Soho House and Hotel du Vin are also in his cv). Evidence of burgeoning ambition is everywhere at the Bee Tree HQ, run by Dermot and his Croatian-born wife Ana. What was once a side project is now the real deal.

En route for Lewes, we popped in for a tasting with the pair’s marketing director, Callum Edge. Limerick (where Dermot began brewing at 14) met Cork (my wife, proud of her hibernian heritage) in the state of the art winery in front of the map charting his 11 hectare Sussex empire. Five vineyards with differing terroirs provide the Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir for the sparklers that have made is reputation.

Storrington Priory Vineyard has a special place in the legend. The Trouble With Dreams was tangentially born there on a plot planted to make wine for the resident monastic order. When the inaugural vintage was wiped out by birds, the Prior, Fr Paul McMahon took it on the chin, saying “That’s the trouble with dreams.”

As long time Trouble fans, we bought a bottle of the 2020 to celebrate our big anniversary. Not in the bell tent; back home in the North, lightly chilled in crystal glasses.

The Trouble With Dreams is available by the glass for £20 at Manchester’s Michelin-starred Mana; on the same list Sugrue’s Cuve Boz Blanc de Blancs 2015 is by the bottle at £210. I bought mine from the Wine Society for £65.

Given 36 months on the lees, it is steely and fresh and quite wonderful. It too has scooped awards, but Sugrue’s latest sensation has undoubtedly been – take a deep breath – a still white called BONKERS Zombie Robot Alien Monsters from the Future Ate My Brain (sur lie). This multi-vintage solera Chardonnay, sold out in a heartbeat. It was is the result of a blend of Chardonnay from the near perfect 2022 vintage which was lightly oxidised, with fruit from 2023. The blend was aged in large, old French oak barrels and was taut and refreshing with complexity emerging down the bottle. The next expression will be released in late 2025. You’d be bonkers to ignore it. And watch this space for a 100 per cent Pinot Noir in the pipeline.

Does the ghost of Thomas Paine haunt the Hart?

Lewes is synonymous with tumultuous Bonfire Night celebrations, marking both the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the 17 Protestant martyrs burned at the stake in Lewes during the reign of Queen Mary. Political dynamite was also fashioned in the town; Thomas ‘Rights of Man’ Paine, key figure in both the French and American Revolutions, lived at Bull House from 1768 to 1774 and honed his debating skills at the Headstrong Club held in The White Hart on the High Street. Did the historical revolutionary zeal rub off on these seekers of nightingale song? Our room in the latest incarnation of the hotel was across the first floor landing from the Headstrong’s meeting room, lovingly preserved by Heartwood Inns during a £4m spend. As are the timbery creaks in a building dating back to the 1560s.

The town, radical chic to the core even with its hilltop castle and well-heeled retirees, does not neglect Paine. There’s a rival pub named after him and while visiting the excellent Friday Food Market we spotted a mural of the young firebrand in the Market Tower. Bull House, his residence while working in the town as an exciseman, has recently re-opened to the public as a museum (Thursdays and Saturdays, 11am-3pm). In 2026, Thomas Paine: Legacy and its partners will launch a Sussex-wide programme of events to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Some two decades after Paine’s time there Lewes’s most famous institution came into being. Family-owned Harvey’s https://www.harveys.org.uk/ still dominates the Ouse river bank and on the attractive Cliffe High Street there’s a large store flogging merchandise and the range of their award-winning beers. The true classic that never fails to delight is Harvey’s Sussex Best Bitter. It is crafted from four local hop varieties, Downs water and a 60-year-old yeast strain.

The best place to sample it is The Lewes Arms, an institution for over 200 years up on Mount Place. Moving with the times, it’s home to idiosyncratic events such as the World Pea Throwing Championships, Spaniel Racing and the ancient pastime of Dwyle Flunking (look it up). or you could just order a heritage grain, wood-fired pizza with your Harvey’s and seek out the hidden garden up top. Lewes is full of such hidden corners, making it a delight to ramble around.

221st century craft beer boasts its own stronghold. It’s well worth the 15 minute walk out of town to Beak’s brewery tap, set under a white chalk cliff. They don’t spare the hops here for hazy NEIPAs and the like, but the result is consistently impressive – at a price. Great branding too.

Best foodie destination? Definitely, Dill, just awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand for chef Dan Cooper’s globally inspired small plates, which have the added virtue of being quite substantial.

FACT FILE

Singing With Nightingales

The 2026 season will run from April 10 to May 28. Dates for the season will be announced and tickets will go on general sale, maximum 40 per session, in November 2025.

Sugrue South Downs, Bee Tree Vineyard, South Rd, Wivelsfield Green, Haywards Heath RH17 7QS. Visits by appointment. There are also Bee Experience Days, exploring the life cycle of the bee, nectar foraging, and honey production to a full hive inspection

The White Hart, 55 High St, Lewes BN7 1XE.

For further details on a fascinating town go to Visit Lewes. Further afield there’s the South Downs Way and Bloomsbury literary shrines, Monk’s House, Rodmell and Charleston – homes respectively of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell.

1 June 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Smoke me an eel to conjure up visions of brackish Fens and the wide Sargasso Sea

The scene most readers remember from Graham Swift’s 1983 breakthrough novel, Waterland, is the one where the doomed 13-year-old Freddie Parr inserts an eel suggestively into Mary Metcalf’s school-regulation knickers. That was a flashback to 1940 when the water-logged Fenland setting was still teeming with Anguilla anguilla, the European eel.

Incest, madness and regret also populate this rather bleak fiction. I’m guessing that all three are less abundant these days. The same definitely goes for those wriggling denizens of the East Anglian shallows and the locals who make a living out of them.

Step forward Smith’s Smokery of Boston, stalwart purveyors of hot smoked eel these past 30 years. Smoking is the way I like my freshwater eel prepared and that’s what Terry Smith and son Chris do over beech chippings. They net some mature silver eels from the East Coast tributaries and drains that trickle into the Wash and the Humber. The rest are imported from the Netherlands, continuing a perennial trade.

You don’t have to have Viking blood in your veins to twig the affinity with herring and eel-centric culinary traditions across the North Sea and into the Baltic. Even today’s groundbreaking Nordic cuisine pays its homage; Noma serves smoked eel in a soup dish with cider vinegar gelée, apple cubes and dill, while Manchester’s own Nordic-influenced Michelin one star, Mana, has impressed with a Yakitori eel glazed with yeast and deep, red blackcurrant vinegar.

It was a remarkable dish I ate recently in Copenhagen that led me to resume my own UK eel trail. A favourite of Noma’s Rene Redzepi, Schønnemann has been the city’s smörrebröd central since 1877. A lunch there provided me with stout-glazed smoked eel on a bed of scrambled eggs with chives on toasted rye bread. Simply perfect.

Back home, where better to start than by purchasing 600g of freshly smoked eel fillets from Smith’s after reading Terry’s back story on their website (from which I have also lifted some atmospheric pictures)?

“Our family has always been catching something. Our great great grandad and grandad were fishermen catching shrimps, cockles, fish and eels in the summer and flight netting for ducks and geese in the winter on the Friskney mudflats in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“But it was eels I started trapping in 1975, after catching them on rod and line during my youth. Eels are always sold live, and at that time Billingsgate market in London was the place to go. I first went to the old market near Tower Bridge which has now gone and is covered in skyscrapers and then later to the new Billingsgate Market at Canary Wharf.

“It was about 1990 that I delivered the first load of eels to Holland by small lorry. Whilst delivering to the Dutch smokehouses we were able to see first hand the techniques on how they smoked them. During this time my son Chris joined me and in 2001 we decided to use the knowledge that we had gained from the Dutch to start Smith’s Smokery. Although many of our eels still go to Holland alive we are smoking more and more as demand and awareness increase.”

We have to ask – is eel a sustainable fish?

There is an exhaustive, yet still fascinating, overview, to which Terry Smith contributed. Despite UK eel stocks having declined by 95 per cent in the last half century these experts remain cautious optimistic about the eel’s future both as a species and on our plate. That’s despite EU rules restricting wild eel fishing to preserve stocks.

A history of eels on our plate

It is hard to see jellied eels wriggle back into fashion. This traditional English dish is associated with East London, where it was a staple food in the 18th and 19th centuries. These pie and mash shop staples are prepared by boiling chopped eels in a spiced stock, which then cools and solidifies into a jelly. The dish is often served cold, with vinegar and white pepper as common accompaniments.

Not for want of trying but I’ve never got the taste for it. Whereas smoked eel remains on my culinary bucket list. It’s an excuse to pop into Soho’s Quo Vadis to sample Jeremy Lee’s signature starter – a smoked eel sandwich in fried sourdough bread with horseradish and mustard creams topped with red onion pickle.

Jeremy has stuck with his original suppliers Mr Beale’s Eels of Lincolnshire (nothing to do with Ian Beale’s Eel Shop in Eastenders!) through their metamorphosis into the Dutch Eel Co, Devon Eel Company and, finally, Meadowland Smokery.

My own long-time online supplier, Brown and Forrest have ditched eels (even though their email address remains info@smokedeel.co.uk).

To sate subsequent cravings I have enjoyed smoked eel from the likes of Upton Smokery near Burford, Pinneys of Orford and the Port of Lancaster Smokehouse. Sign of the times – the latter import fresh eel from Australia and New Zealand.

How smoked eel is prepared

Hot smoking is the route, preferably with beech wood, which is subtler than oak. Uncooked, the flesh is strongly metallic. Mature silver eels offer a firmer less fatty flesh than juveniles. Brown and Forrest method was to gut and briefly roast them before have up to three hours’ smoking over sawdust.

What to do with it at home

It’s a mite disconcerting when a whole eel drops through the letterbox, albeit vacuum packed. Yet its straightforward to fillet it from its one bone and spoon off the flesh from the skin. The leftovers make a smoky broth.

The whole eel has a four-week shelf life, it can be hung in the larder or wrapped in parchment and stored in the fridge.In fillet form it can be frozen.

Destination Sargasso Sea – an epic trek

Consult Chapter 26 of Waterland for a romantic exploration of the myths surrounding the eel and its journey back to the Caribbean, via the Azores, to breed for a single time… and die. No space here for a run down on the enduring mystery surrounding the creature. Modern tagging has confirmed the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile, seaweed-strewn patch of ocean south west of Bermuda, is definitely the breeding ground for the eels. Once spawned, the larvae drift back to European waters via ocean currents. It might take two years before they turn up as fragile, transparent glass eels in familiar places like our own Fens. These adapt to fresh or brackish water, developing into elvers and eventually sexually mature yellow eels around 1m long, before they are ready to make the return journey.

• Eel plays an important role in Japanese cuisine, but that’s a story for another day. Sayonara.

28 May 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Bacalhau to the future – the time I shared salt cod with Cristiano Ronaldo

The salt cod milestones of my life? We’ll stick with three. Flash back to 2006 when Portugal knocked England out of the World Cup on penalties after Wayne Rooney was sent off. It prompted a notorious wink from his Manchester United team-mate Ronaldo. Not long after, at an intimate Sunday preview of a new Portuguese restaurant on Bridge Street, I was introduced to the still gauche CR7.

Neither of us was going to step over the chance to order Salt Cod Gomes Sa, served with poached egg, crushed potatoes, black olives and spring onions. The Bacalhau was as good as his mum Dolores used to make in Madeira, he told me. And Wayne was still a pal.

A decade later, at a Naples restaurant devoted to what the Italians called Baccalà, I was treated to a six course tasting menu of the stuff, culminating in a dessert that paired the salt cod with chocolate and pine-nuts. Reader, I gagged.

Of course, on markets across the Med, you’ll find those unappetising yellowy strips of dried fish caked in salt that need to be soaked before cooking. The ubiquitous treatment is what the Provencals call Brandade de Morue and the Spanish Brandada de Bacalao. It’s there (main image above) on the new spring menu at Exhibitio n on Peter Street in Manchester, where the Baratxuri kitchen has smoked the potatoes for the whipped olive oil emulsion and boosted it with Basque chorizo. The fish flakes offered intense flavour that has finally won me over to salt cod’s charms.

Keen to dissociate itself from your average food hall, Exhibition is offering a single combined à la carte fusing Baratxuri with fellow fixtures Jaan by Another Hand and OSMA . It is a game to guess which dish came from which chef. Just don’t peep at the latest counter your server is arriving from.

All three operators are a destination in their own right and for OSMA it will be their sole outlet after closing their acclaimed Prestwich restaurant in search of a new city centre equivalent. Spoiler alert. Billed as Scandi-influenced, at Exhibition they puzzlingly offer tuna sashimi and panko chicken thigh tonkatsu. Now that’s what I call mix and match.

Why Bacalhau à Brás remains Ronaldo’s comfort fave

Well over two decades later, as a muscled-up veteran Ronaldo plies his trade for Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr FC, traditional salt cold remains an essential part of a rigorous high protein diet dedicated to career longevity. It may be his one (slight) self-indulgence. Indeed at the CR7 Corner Bar & Bistro Baixa inside the superstar’s Pestana CR7 Lisboa boutique hotel you can order Bacalhau à Brás. Wash it down with a ‘Ballon d’Or’ cocktail.

Brás or Braz in English alludes to its inventor, a bar owner in Lisbon’s Bairro Alto. Brás has since become a technique that can be used to cook various types of fish and even vegetables. It has an onion, garlic, and potato base that is held together by creamy scrambled eggs. The olives are optional.

Buy salted cod (or its Northern European counterpart, stockfish) at Manchester’s Arndale Market or Out of The Blue fishmongers in Chorlton. Essential before you start give it a 24 hours plus soaking. Now create your own Bacalhau à Brás.

INGREDIENTS

500g potatoes

400g salted codfish

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

5 tbsp olive oil

1 bay leaf

5 eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

Parsley, spring onions and olives.

METHOD

Peel the onion and thinly slice. Set the oven temperature to 230°C.

Peel the potatoes and slice them into thin strips, then into sticks of equal size. Rinse the sticks thoroughly, drain, and pat dry with absorbent paper or cloth. Place them in a bowl and top them with about 3 tbsp of olive oil. Place the sticks on an oven tray sprayed with olive oil. Check that they don’t overlap. Cook until golden in batches, flipping halfway through.

Place the cod in a pan, pour boiling water and keep the heat on a high flame. Cook for around eight minutes. Drain, reserving the water in a bowl.

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan and over a medium heat.Fry the onion until it becomes transparent. It should take roughly six minutes. Cook for three minutes more after adding the garlic and bay leaf.

Manually shred the cod, eliminating any bones or skin. Introduce the cod into the onion mixture, stirring occasionally and cook for 5 minutes.

Pour the eggs into a small bowl and whisk them together. Incorporate them into the fish mixture. Cook it on a low heat while continually stirring. The eggs must be cooked while remaining fluffy. Stir in the potatoes and season with black pepper and salt to taste. Garnish with the parsley, spring onions and olives.

9 April 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Travel, Uncategorised, Wine

Biodynamic Washington wine (and a slice of David Lynch’s cherry pie)

Guardians of the Red Mountain sounds pure Lord of the Rings. So too the ritual planting of a sacred cow horn to thwart the dominance of the chemical Dark Lord. Easy on the Tolkien there. The biodynamic Hedges Family Estate is set not in some mythical Shires but in one of the prime viticultural sites of Washington State in the north west USA.

Mountain? More of a long mound apparently, coloured by reddish cheat grass in spring before the grapes take centre stage – true object of the family’s self-styled guardianship. This is as hot and dry as it gets with cool nights, the soil a mix of clay, loess and rocky granite, making it perfect for creating stellar, tannic red wines; Hedges are a rarity among their peers in going down the biodynamic route.

This means their five vineyards are farmed according to the eco-forward tenets of the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Probably the most divisive of these recommends the use of ‘preparation BD500’, where horns are filled with ox manure and buried in October to stay in the ground throughout the dormant season. The horn is later unearthed, diluted with water and sprayed onto the soil.

However wacky it may sound the proof is surely in the wine quality and the 2020 vintage of La Haute Cuvee, their first certified biodynamic wine, is supple and savoury with masses of ripe blackcurrant under its tannic shield.

I am tasting it alongside a trio of other Hedges reds (including a stunning Syrah ‘Les Gosses’) at a Pacific Peaks & Vines roadshow in Manchester, showcasing the wines of Washington and Oregon. I’m in the amiable company of the brand’s travelling ambassador, Christophe Hedges, who runs the estate with his winemaker sister Sarah. She led the charge to biodynamic practice and natural fermentation; in a region of ‘big’ wines theirs possess a certain Old World finesse.

Maybe put that down the influence of their French mum Anne-Marie. She and husband Tom harvested their first vintage in 1987 before purchasing 50 acres on Red Mountain two years later to plant mainly Bordeaux varietals. These days (from their French chateau-like base) they are adapting to climate change by employing drought-resistant grape varieties and careful irrigation in an area that gets only eight to nine inches of rain a year.

All in stark contrast to Oregon, the other state participating in Pacific Peaks & Vines. There a more temperate, rainier microclimate close to the ocean is more suitable for the cultivation of Chardonnay and especially Pinot Noir. I was particularly impressed at the Manchester Side Street tasting by examples from Willamette Valley stalwarts Stoller.

Between them Oregon and Washington account for seven per cent of US production volumes, exports to the UK are growing but still tiny and we are talking premium prices, an average of £40 a bottle.

If Willamette Pinot remains my target tipple I can now see the attraction of both ‘twin peaks’ of North Coast viticulture

Cherry pie is on the menu in the real-life Twin Peaks

And you thought Twin Peaks was just a hugely acclaimed TV show, created by David Lynch, who died last month. It’s also coincidentally the name given to wineries in Western Australia, California’s Sonoma and Mallorca while its star, Kyle MacLachlan himself dabbles in the wine trade with his private label, Pursued by Bear.

I’d like to think his Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon offers hints of cherry pie on the nose. That pie, in the company of “damn fine coffee”, was the chosen treat of MacLachlan’s character, Agent Dale Cooper.

Naturally, on our last visit to Washington State, we sampled both in the hotel that stood in for the Great Northern Hotel in David Lynch’s surreal TV series. We had been based in Yakima, epicentre of the Yakima Valley wine and hop-growing region, an hour’s drive to the west of Red Mountain.

The Salish Lodge was our lunchtime stop-off heading further west towards Seattle. After the desert climate of Yakima, we hit big rain crossing the Cascades range. The mountain murk was so dense we couldn’t even get a view of 14,411ft Mount Rainier, the USA’s fifth highest and one of the world’s great standalone peaks (we glimpsed it later from the equally iconic Space Needle in Seattle).

After slaloming down forested switchbacks it was a relief to reach Salish Lodge perched on the brink of the Snoqualmie Falls, one of Washington’s big visitor draws. The famous waterfall there, swollen by those rains, was in full spate as the clouds cleared enough for a proper view from the terrace path of, where we were booked in for lunch at its Attic restaurant.

First though we had to investigate this luxury inn’s Twin Peaks souvenir shop. Echoing some Lynchlike plot twist, one of the stars of the original and the recent follow-up series, Harry Dean Stanton, had died the previous day.

It was a mark of respect to a great actor that, after oysters, clams and stone hearth fired pizza, we had to find room for that pie.

What are the secrets of biodynamic wine?

Biodynamics is often referred to as ‘super-charged organic’. Rather than simply reducing chemical inputs, biodynamic production is a proactive attempt to bring life to the soil with the use of natural composts and organic preparations.

It’s more than just an agricultural system, rather an altered world view that then impacts on the practice of agriculture. Winemakers drawn to this philosophy tend to be creative, spiritual types, deeply connected to their land and always experimenting to see what works best.

Demeter biodynamic certification is the reward for going down this radical route, which forbids chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. Instead insect life and spiders are encouraged to control pests; manure encourages organic growth. After hand-harvesting the grapes the wine is produced in a gravity-fed cellar without winemaking additives. Ambient yeasts are used, with no or scant sulfites and no fining.

More controversially all significant vineyard activities – soil preparation, planting, pruning, harvesting – are done in accordance with the influence on earth by the moon, stars and planets. Finally, the aspect that can spark scepticism – the use of nine preparations 500-508 (a bit like homeopathy), using plants such as nettles, dandelion and chamomile, to be applied in powdered form or as sprays. And then there is the afore-mentioned Preparation 500.

One French winemaker of my acquaintance wrote of the Steiner strictures: “It is important to understand that 50 percent is symbolic and 50 percent is real… it all helps focus.”

All of which reminds me of a memorable trip to Ted Lemon’s Littorai winery in Sonoma, California. In Ted’s absence his young deputy confessed to not being a total convert to biodynamics (the perfection of the Pinot Noir was proof enough for us). And yet, as he put it, “It sure does make you pay attention.”

The damn good wines of Hedges Family Estate sure grabbed mine.

• A range of Hedges Family Estate Wines is available in the UK from Guildford-based sustainable merchant Wine & Earth.

14 February 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Travel

Go with the flow – a delicious Dordogne foodie journey

Pilgrimages are not uncommon in the Dordogne. The region is on a main Camino de Santiago route and has boasted its own essential holy stop-off for 1,000 years, Rocamadour. My quest was of a more earthly nature – to discover if French food really is a shadow of its former self. Rivals Spain and Scandinavia, with their own different approaches, have stolen much of its culinary thunder in recent years, while Italian produce fills everyone’s larders.

Surely the Dordogne, bastion of regional tradition, built on foundations of foie gras, confit and every speciality you can squeeze out of a walnut, would uphold the reputation of La Belle France (even if for a substantial period of its history it was ruled by England)?

It certainly has sublime terroir on its side, yet as it turned out the most interesting meal of the trip was served in a dull street in Brive-la-Gaillarde – what counts as a big city in this agricultural region, its airport the gateway to places more immediately touristique. We flew in from Stansted with Ryanair.

Martel’s Lionhearted legacy

Half an hour’s drive south, this is a harmonious melange of pale stone and red tiles, restaurants and cafes clustering around the rustically timbered 18th century market halle. Facing it is our introduction to the local cuisine, a bistro called Le Petit Moulin.

Chef/patron Adrien Castagné’s mission is to celebrate local products. Even the wine we taste is from his own family vineyard – an organic Cahors. It’s softened by Merlot but is mostly Malbec, a reminder the grape existed long before Argentina monopolised it. Of course, for starters I had to order a tranche of the family foie gras and it was sensationally creamy.

Across the cobbled square sits the turreted Maison Fabri, where in 1183 Henry Curtmantle, estranged elder son of Henry II, perished of a fever, thus speeding Richard The Lionheart to the throne of England and the rest is history, as they say. Hard to credit mellow Martel with such a turbulent past but that’s the reason the Dordogne features so many castles on crags.

Rocamadour – it’s a bit steep

Even the Cité Réligieuse of Rocamadour is a cliffhanging fortified site, scaled by 216 calf-stretching steps called the ‘Grand Escalier’. Hard to credit that medieval pilgrims used to mount it on their hands and knees. Today’s funicular cut into the hillside was sorely tempting, but that rich lunch had to be worked off.

Out of season is the best time to visit the complex of seven sanctuaries, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which attracts 1.5 million visitors a year. The big draw is the miracle-working, walnut-sculpted Madonna in the Chapelle Notre Dame. Tourist emporia tat aside, the whole Rocamadour experience is spectacular, if a mite spurious. A sanctified fourth century hermit called Amadour is the alleged founder but he may well just be one of those Dark Ages figments.

A rural retreat with a Michelin star

Rocamadour is not a place to seek out Michelin-starred dining. For that drive 20 minutes north west to the Pont de l’Ouysse. This quietly chic four star hotel, in the same family for five generations, is as delightful as its situation, alongside a ruined bridge (hence the name) over tributary of the Dordogne River. From my room terrace I looked on the perched castle of Belcastel (main image above) to the sound of the rippling stream.

Chef Stéphane Chambon and his brother Matthieu, front of house, worked across the globe before returning to take over this stalwart one-star establishment from their father Daniel. It is not cutting edge bells and whistles, mind. Stéphane’s focus is on extracting the maximum flavour from some seriously fine raw materials. A duck carpaccio oozing a walnut dressing sets the pattern for a beautifully balanced dinner. My only regret was that Stéphane’s celebrated Hare Royale wasn’t among the mains. Note that this establishment is open only from April to early November.

A cracking time in Walnut Central

Both here in the river valley and further north in the Perigord Noir, around Sarlat, walnut trees dominate the landscape, as they always have. So valuable was the oil in medieval times it was used as currency, its health-giving properties have been equally treasured and in 2002 it was granted AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) status, protecting its authenticity and quality.

It’s the traditional mills, strung out along the Route de la Noix and serviced by some 40 sq km of orchards, that really benefit. We popped in on the tiny Moulin de Maneyrol, where Charlie Le Gallo presses award-winning artisanal oils after crushing with traditional grindstones.

Elsewhere, around Sarlat, the walnut products, (like the foie gras too) are manufactured on a more industrial scale. I enjoyed walnut cakes and breads but walnut wines and liqueurs weren’t really for me – even from the celebrated Distillerie Denoix in their historic Brive premises.

Towering mystery of Sarlat’s Lanterne des Morts

Sarlat-la-Caneda, to give it its full title, is much more bustling than of yore. On our visit in-season asparagus and strawberries joined the inevitable walnut oil, confit, magret de canard and foie gras in all its guises on market stalls beefed up for a ‘Festival du Terroir’.

Yet stray beyond the Place de la Liberté and surrounding lanes and Sarlat still charms. Behind the Bishop’s Palace you’ll find the curious, bullet-shaped Lanterne des Morts tower, built in the 12th century. Purpose? Lost in the mists. Its lawn was a perfect spot for my baguette of torched foie gras and a local craft beer.

The centre is full of eye-catching buildings, notably the narrow French Renaissance masterpiece, the Hotel de Maleville and the gabled, mullioned Maison de la Boetie, once home to the humanist poet Etienne de la Boetie, bosom buddy of the great Michel de Montaigne. For a full view of the medieval cityscape, with its signature ‘lauze’ heavy limestone roof slabs, take the ‘Ascenseur Panoramique’ a glass-sided lift built into a church tower.

And then I fell for ‘sleeping beauty’ Collonges

All was redeemed next day at Collonges-la-Rouge, prime contender for most beautiful village in the region. Swamped in high season, obviously, but even then manages an odd bucolic serenity, its sandstone houses and remaining towers glowing rosily among meadows and orchards.

It is so beautifully preserved because its original raison d’etre, wine, was scuppered by the 1880s phylloxera vive bug epidemic and it all fell into a long sleep until the Sixties when forward-looking souls rescued it from further dilapidation.

Among those saviours was the Breuil family, who run Le Cantou in the heart of the hamlet. Camille Breuil’s parents converted the family home into an inn in 1961 just as tourism was starting to develop; she took over in 1985 and steered it towards gourmet dining. Now it’s being handed on to the next generation.

After perhaps the best foie gras starter of the trip my main of lamb sweetbreads was divine, washed down with a classic Cahors red, Chateau Pineraie, on ther vine-shaded terrace.

Relax on the river at La Roque-Gageac

La Roque-Gageac battle Collonges for loveliest village plaudit. It is very different, its ochre houses spectacularly set into a cliff on the north bank of the Dordogne. Alas, the road that separates village from river is invariably rammed with tourist traffic. Do as we did and book a lazy 55 minute trip downstream on a motorised replica of the Dordogne’s traditional ‘Gabares’ river boats. The more energetic could hire a canoe and take in the village spectacle from the opposite bank.

Actually the most stunning view is from the high belvedere of L es Jardins de Marqueyssac a couple of miles away. Walk through a maze of 150,000 topiary boxwood trees, surrounding a rather modest 17th century chateau (its castle neighbours are all more monumental). Beyond the peacock-haunted formal gardens you’ll be rewarded with vertiginous views of La Roque-Gageac, the river and a landscape dotted with Chateaux – Fayrac, Beynac and Castelnaud (whose owners restored Marqueyssac).

The region does deal in the spectacular but it dances to a quieter beat in towns such as Terrasson-Lavilledieu with its Romanesque stone bridge across the Vézère or villages such as Curemonte with its niche drinks offerings – ‘straw’ wine and dandelion liqueur, best sipped on the ridge with a view of the picture-perfect hamlet.

Marvellous market day in Brive-la-Gaillarde

No one would call Brive picturesque, but I loved walking into its well-preserved centre at breakfast time just as they were setting up the market, live chicken stall and all. The Marché Georges Brassens in the Place de de la Guierle is called as the droll Fifties chanson singer, who name-checked the town in a 1952 song, Hécatombe, about a market brawl.

Open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays it’s a more laidback place, give or take a spot of haggling. Workaday rather than Sarlatesque touristique, it is a reminder of the splendid fresh produce the French take for granted.

If that was a clincher for traditions being upheld, our dinner destination was proof that open-minded chefs exist too to take advantage. Maybe Nicolas Eche would baulk at a ‘fusion’ tag, but the menu at his bistro En Cuisin e is not afraid to add exotic spice to its market-driven raw materials and yet also here are French classics, pig’s trotters and ris de veau, delicately deconstructed versions. The wine list supports regional wines that often go under the radar in the UK. A red Pécharmant Les Hauts de Corbiac was the perfect accompaniment to both my Limousin beef carpaccio with herring eggs and a main of ‘Veau, bas carré confit et grillé legumes du moment, curry vert, royale de moelle’.

So veal ‘several ways’, seasonal veg but with bone marrow and a Thai-inspired green curry. France still rules – with a little assistance from the global marketplace, naturellement.

3 December 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Travel

Off with its leaves – how I finally executed a recipe using Good King Henry

In Patience Gray’s classic Honey from a Weed (1986),her account of culinary subsistence living in Puglia during the Seventies, she writes of the annual known as fat hen: ‘I was astonished to find that in the Salento people call this plant ‘la saponara’ and use it to clean their hands after working in the fields, rather than eating it. It is often found in cultivated ground next to deadly nightshade. The shape of their leaves is similar, but those of the nightshade are dark green; so study both plants before gathering fat hen.”

All rather insouciant and I’d rather take the frisson out of foraging unless I’m dead certain what I’m picking is not toxic. So I’m not in the “that’s probably not fly agaric” camp. Yet this is a land today where the likes of sea buckthorn and wild garlic prop up restaurant menus in season and at the wonderful The Riverside, in Herfordshire’s Lugg valley I didn’t feel I was being stung when chef patron Andy Link served up a nettle cake as pud. Local snails and sweet cicely parfait also featured in a memorable meal.

*Andy Link in his Riverside Aymestrey kitchen garden*

Behind this 16th century sheep drovers’ inn rise veg terraces steepling into wooded hills. And there among the brassicas and edible flowers we stumbled upon the bane of my summer, Good King Henry. Now we all Know who Bad King Henry was; recent polls have awarded ‘Worst Monarch’ label to the VIII. But The Good?

The name of this species of goosefoot (and close relative of fat hen/white goosefoot) doesn’t reference royalty. It comes from the German Guter Heinrich (Good Henry) to distinguish it from Böser Heinrich (Bad Henry) a name for the poisonous plant Mercurialis perennis. Brits adde the King bit later. No that it has ever ruled our tables. It is still much cherished by home cooks in Alpine regions for its spinach like qualities. I wanted to join their number when accepting a sturdy specimen as a gift from Andy Link. Then my wobbles began.

Safely replanted at home next to the Charlemagne horseradish and the research began into a wild plant whose Latin name is Chenopodium bonus-henricus but goes under a variety of monickers – perennial or oak-leaved goosefoot, poor man’s asparagus, mercury, common orache, long-stalked orache, spear-leaved orache and, notably in this country, Lincolnshire spinach. Until the 19thy century Good King Henry was regularly been used in British kitchens, possibly first introduced by the Romans; pollen from it has been found been found on sites even before then,

Like the fat hen (Chenopodium album) it is semi-wild and can grow up to 75cm tall. It has large, triangular leaves with powdery surfaces and wavy edges. The first green leaves emerge in April and are available for picking until August. From May through August, the small flower spikes are visible.

The leaves, stalks, and blossom buds can all be eaten, but the flavour of the leaves becomes bitterer as the season goes on Which is why, now it is September have I left my harvesting too late. Already the leaves at the back are turning ruddy and sere.

From the star those large triangular leaves share with sorrel (a favourite of mine) acidic traces of oxalic acid. OK, it is proof of valuable iron but bad for you if you suffer from rheumatism or gout, apparently. I’m working on the later.

Surely, it’s no bitterer than kale. Should I just lightly steam it as I make my belated effort to cook with Henry? Or perhaps go down the salsa verde route? Blending it with vinegar, salt and capers?

In the end I aim for a more substantial dish, a quiche with a touch of honey – to counter the ouch factor – ricotta and honey. I had first soaked the leaves for an hour in a salty solution to leach out the bitterness and then rinsed them. How did it turn out? Dandelionish, the hint of honey didn’t detract from a sharpness, quelled by the eggs. I accompanied it with steamed Swiss chard, scattered with toasted pine nuts.

My harvest left very little foliage on my Good King Henry, but it’s a perennial and famously pest-resistant, so I expect it will be back sturdier than ever; and it hardly seems invasive. Famous last words not quite. Further research reveal it is also a host plant to several moths: death’s-head hawkmoth, nutmeg, orache, dark spinach and plain pug moth. What does this mean for my little plot?

11 September 2024/by Neil Sowerby

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Hereford Cathedral – an intimate voyage of discovery

Downtown– what lies beyond the Mappa Mundi?

An inspiration for Elgar’s Enigma Variations

It’s all down in black and white

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We live the Castle dream near the site of an epic battle

Luxurious, arty and handily placed – Clontarf Castle Hotel

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The Trouble with Dreams, the beauty of English bubbles

Does the ghost of Thomas Paine haunt the Hart?

We have to ask – is eel a sustainable fish?

A history of eels on our plate

How smoked eel is prepared

What to do with it at home

Destination Sargasso Sea – an epic trek

Why Bacalhau à Brás remains Ronaldo’s comfort fave

Cherry pie is on the menu in the real-life Twin Peaks

What are the secrets of biodynamic wine?

Martel’s Lionhearted legacy

Rocamadour – it’s a bit steep

A rural retreat with a Michelin star

A cracking time in Walnut Central

Towering mystery of Sarlat’s Lanterne des Morts

And then I fell for ‘sleeping beauty’ Collonges

Relax on the river at La Roque-Gageac

Marvellous market day in Brive-la-Gaillarde

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