Mea culpa.
Back in early August local restaurant Cook House in Newcastle held a wine tasting called ‘Soaked’ with the focus on natural wines from merchants across the country, As I dashed off to France for an early vendanges with Jeff Coutelou I overlooked the fact that I had not written about this very enjoyable event. Having long bemoaned the lack of wine events in general here in the North East, let alone natural wine events, this was a bad mistake on my part. Apologies to all who made Soaked a success.
Cook House is a very good, easily recommended restaurant and the range of merchants invited was exciting. I managed to taste through most of the vines on offer and I have added images of my notes for the favourite wines on the day. (Green – white wines; orange, pink and red speak for themselves)
Thanks to everyone who contributed, it was a very good tasting with some different wines. There was a big range of Central and European wines which was exciting as, in my opinion, this is the most exciting area of the wine world at present. I would caution that quite a lot of these wines were very lean and lacked some fruit. Maybe it was that which persuaded me to choose a wine from a traditional region as my highlight of the event. Le Puy is a celebrated Bordeaux producer who have long eschewed synthetic chemicals in their vineyards and SO2 in their cellars. Cuvee Emilien 2020 is very much Merlot led with bits of the two Cabernets and Carmenere too. In other words, not my usual choice of grapes but this was full, fruit led and very long and complex with excellent structure. Exemplary wine making. I was also very fond of all the Roland Wines’ bottles that I have described.
Soaked was clearly a resounding success with large numbers attending, a very busy food area serving tasty choices and enthusiasm all around. Let’s hope we get Soaked again soon.
amarchinthevines 