NEW FOREST WINES INDEPENDENT MERCHANT IN HAMPSHIRE
- Name: New Forest Wines
- Managing Director: Graham Sims
- Tel: 01425 489771
- Adress: 8 Christchurch Road, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 1DN
- Opening Times: 10am to 5pm (M to W), 10am to 7pm (T to S) and Closed on Sunday
- E-mail: graham@newforestwines
- Web: www.newforestwines.com
New Forest Wines is an Independent Merchant offering a fantastic selection of top quality wines, speciality spirits and locally produced beer and cider. Only wines that meet the strictest criteria get a listing – no global corporate mass-produced overly-branded wine here.
Passionate about sourcing from smaller, quality driven boutique producers. All wines have been personally chosen, tasted and rated to ensure the best quality and value for money at all price levels. You will fine a selection of interesting and unusual wines overflowing with character, balanced by a comprehensive range of Classics.
The wine shop is run by Graham Sims, making the service and advice of the highest level, aiming for the best possible customer satisfaction. A few bottles always open for tasting, fantastic daily offers & bin-ends or just pop in for a chat.
Graham has adapted the range to suit his clientele, with value for money "party wines" rubbing shoulders with classed growth clarets, top burgundy and classics from the New World such as Rockford and Ridge. His wine range is always evolving, complimented by a fine selection of single malts from independent bottlers, cognac and old armagnacs.
SERVICES AT NEW FOREST WINES
- Wine Tasting: They run a quite varied selection of wine tasting events throughout the year, both in the shop and at local restaurants.
- Delivery: They offer free local delivery (within 5 miles) when buying one or more cases of wine.
- Planning a Wine Cellar?: They can advise on the best ways to store wine, whether it be building a cellar or storing your wine externally. They can also help you to plan your cellar to mature wines for your expected future drinking requirements.
- Dinner Parties: They are able to help you select wines for each course of your dinner party. Please bring in your planned menu and we can give a traditional, classic or off-the-wall, unusual selection of wines to match perfectly.
- Glass Loan: Champagne flutes and wine glasses available on free loan for parties and events, when you purchase the wine from me.
- Tutored Tastings: Regular events both in the shop and at local restaurants. There will be guest speakers from wine estates and agents at some tastings.
- Mailing List: Sign up to their mailing list for more information on: Tutored tastings; Exciting new additions to their range; Special offers; Offers on limited availability, "cult" and "prestige" wines. They promise not to bombard you with information, just enough to keep you informed about what's going on!
- Wholesale: If you are searching for an interesting wine list, with great trade pricing, for a local bar or restaurant then look no further! Contact Graham for a range of exclusive wines just not available elsewhere.
RINGWOOD IN HAMPSHIRE (ENGLAND)
Ringwood is an historic market town and civil parish in Hampshire, England, located on the River Avon, close to the New Forest and northeast of Bournemouth. It has a history dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, and has held a weekly market since the Middle Ages. The town is situated in the extreme southwest of Hampshire, on the border with Dorset.
Ringwood has a weekly market in the traditional market place. A cattle market ran until 1989 in the Furlong, which is now home to a Waitrose supermarket, coffee shops, fashion outlets and now an Independent Wine Merchant. Ringwood was noted as the second most expensive market town in England in July 2008 with average property prices of over £380,000.
Ringwood is the home of the Ringwood Brewery, which produces a variety of cask ales and runs five pubs in the local area, such as the Inn on the Furlong in Ringwood. Ringwood brewery also produces a variety of wines. It was recently taken over by Marston's Brewery, who plan to keep the brewery and all its brands, but lease out its tied public houses.
NEW FOREST (SOUTHERN ENGLAND NATIONAL PARK)
The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes one of the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire and towards east Dorset.
The name also refers to the New Forest National Park which has similar boundaries. Additionally the New Forest local government district is a subdivision of Hampshire which covers most of the Forest and some nearby areas, although it is no longer the planning authority for the National Park itself. There are many villages dotted around the area, and several small towns in the Forest and around its edges.
BRITISH REGIONAL FOOD (HAMPSHIRE)
You don't have to travel to France or Italy to experience a rich diversity of regional foods. In fact english cuisine encompasses diferent cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with England. It has distinctive attributes of its own, but also shares much with wider British cuisine, partly through the importation of ingredients and ideas from North America, China, and India during the time of the British Empire and as a result of post-war immigration.
Hampshire is famous for sheep lamb, beef and watercress: Pig meat and sheep meat thus feature strongly in Hampshire, sometimes in combination, as in the traditional beef, lamb and bacon casserole. Rasher puddings were a popular cottage meal, a means of using up scraps of meat and bread. Sometimes rabbit might be substituted for the bacon. Somewhat similar in origin was Hampshire’s savoury roly poly, or bacon and onion roll, the local equivalent to Cornish pasties. Hampshire haslet is another local speciality.
- Sheep: Have been important to the area at least since medieval times. The breed known as Hampshire Down appeared from the 1840’s. Major sheep fairs at Winchester, Weyhill, Overton, Stockbridge and Whitchurch allowed brisk trading.
- Pork: Is particularly associated with the New Forest, where pigs graze on acorns, beech mast and windfall apples from orchards. The quality of the bacon and ham is very good. Rasher puddings were a popular cottage meal and were useful because they used up scraps of meat and bread. Hampshire Haslet is another favourite and it is a simple pork loaf dish.
- Watercress: Is an indigenous plant introduced to commercial cultivation in 1808. Hampshire was one of the main counties in England to grow the crop because of the many clear, free-fl owing streams. The river Arle at Alresford had five watercress growers listed in 1890 and the town is still the centre of watercress production in Hampshire. The largest grower in Europe, Vitacress Ltd, was founded in Alresford.
Watercress used to be sent by stagecoach to London but later it went by train on a line that became known as The Watercress Line. The Watercress Line steam train still exists and it now carries tourists (rather than the salad crop) the short distance from Alresford to Alton.
Watercress soup features in almost every local cookery book, and in some there are recipes for watercress sauce and other specialities.
- Fish: Fish dishes were a major component of Hampshire cookery. The rivers Avon and Test are famed for their fishing and Christchurch and Fordingbridge have been leading centres for river fishing. Christchurch is particularly well known for salmon and Fordingbridge and the river Whitewater for trout. Fish dishes, such as baked mackerel and many recipes for trout, were another major component of Hampshire cookery.
- Baking: In baking, Cobbett referred to bread baked in fl at cases ‘like what Hampshire people call oven cakes’. Lardy cake (without fruit) has always been a feature of the county’s cookery.
MATCHING WINE STYLES WITH FOOD
Finding a wine and food combination that works absolutely perfectly is one of the greatest pleasures in life.
When it comes to matching wine with food, there are no rights and wrongs, just opinions and suggestions. Many of the old "rules" are being eroded by the spread of world cuisine and "fusion" cooking. And wine styles, too, are evolving: big, oaky New World Chardonnays, for example, go just as well with roast chicken as the traditional choice of a light red wine. Of course, you can enjoy a delicious bottle of any wine that may not have anything in common with the food you are eating. But, believe me, it is one of life's greatest pleasures to enjoy a meal where the wine is in perfect harmony with the food. I knew from my earliest years that the right wine could turn the simplest family meal into an occasion - and ever since, I've been on a quest matching good food with perfect wine to create unforgettable meals.
- Dispelling the Miths: There are no strict rules that say you cannot eat what you like with whichever style of wine you choose. The long-established myth that white wine should be drunk with fish and red wine with meat is just that — a myth! It may have held some truth two hundred years ago when meat was roasted and fish was poached. And it is certainly true that tannin in red wine reacts poorly with fish. But these days we are blessed with a much wider range of meats and fish from all over the world, as well as a greater variety of wines. There are light, lively reds that make a fantastic match for “meaty” fish such as fresh tuna, and heavier, oak-aged whites that go superbly well with chicken.
- Equal Partners: The first factor to consider when looking for a perfect wine and food match is the relationship between the density of the food and the body of the wine. If the food is heavy, such as a stew or casserole, then you need to match it with a ripe, full wine, probably a red such as a Merlot or Shiraz. The strength of flavour of a dish, as a general rule, should be matched by the intensity of flavour in the wine that accompanies it. Chinese and Asian dishes, for example, which use a wide array of spices to create complex and intense flavours, need to be matched with wines that are also flavour-intensive; whites such as Gewtirztraminer or Riesling make a far better match than soft, oaky Chardonnays.
The acidity in the food is another important factor to consider. Dishes that include lemon, apple, or vinaigrette need to be matched with wines with high acidity Fatty or oily dishes - smoked salmon, or fish served in a beurre Wane sauce, for example — also require wines with a higher level of acidity, to cut through the oiliness of the food and add an extra taste dimension.
Some foods are notoriously difficult to match with wine: chillies, asparagus, eggs, and soup. The general rule would be to opt for a fairly neutral wine with not too much acidity. The problem with chillies is that often you can taste very little else, so don’t choose too expensive a wine! The flavour of asparagus is quite intense and needs a fairly intense wine to match, such as an oaked Chardonnay. It is best to avoid trying to match red wines with egg, but there are so many different egg dishes that experimentation is a must. A good starting point, however, would be an unoaked Chardonnay or white Burgundy. With soups, obviously the best wine match will depend on the soup’s flavour. In general though, I usually recommend wines with high acidity to cut through creamy soups, or perhaps a fuller red wine with its strong tannins.
The cheese course can be a tricky one. Not all cheese goes well with red wine. Generally, the harder the cheese the better it is with reds. Soft cheeses such as Camembert and Brie match well with white wines and, of course, there is the famous marriage (made in heaven, in my view!) between goat’s cheese and Sauvignon Blanc.
- Saving the Best for Last: Many people choose a white wine with their starter, a red for the main course, and then go straight to coffee with dessert. They are really missing out, as some of the best wines in the world fall into the dessert category - Barsac, Sauternes, and Monbazillac to name but a few. Delicious! The basic rule to follow is that the wine should be as sweet or even sweeter than the dessert it is paired with. If not, it will taste pallid.
- Salty Dishes Need Wines With Naturally High Acidity: It is no coincidence that tangy Fino sherry goes so well with tapas - salted almonds, salted fish, and spicy, salty chorizo sausages, for example. Because this combination of appetizer and apéritif evolved together in the same part of the world. Salt in food has the effect of neutralizing acidity in the wine and allowing the underlying fruit flavours to come to the fore. Just as salt brings out the flavours in food. It is therefore best to choose wines that are naturally high in acidity to match salty dishes. With a salty cheese, such as Roquefort, always choose dessert wines with really zingy acidity, such as those from the Loire.
- Meaty Fish Dishes can Take a Light Red: Whoever had it laid down on tablets of stone that white wines are for fish and red wines are for meat should be put on bread and water rations for ever and a day! While it is true that tannins in red wine can create a nasty metallic taste when drunk with fish, there is fish and there is fish! Light, fruity reds with low tannins can match very well with fish with a dense, "meaty" texture, such as fresh tuna, salmon, and swordfish, especially if the wine is served slightly chilled. White fish, by contrast, tend to be light in texture and served with light sauces. These do need to be partnered with delicate white wines or, if the flavours are more intense, more juicy, aromatic whites.
- Oily Foods Need Acidity or Tannin: Some food-and-wine rules are about pairing like for like (sweet wines with puddings, for example) but others are about matching opposites, and this is certainly the case when choosing wines to complement oily foods. If dishes are oily, they are likely also to be fairly rich, sometimes creamy, but certainly with a degree of cloying opulence that needs to be tempered by the wine you choose to drink with them. If you are selecting a white wine, make sure it has a high degree of acidity, to cut through the fattiness or oiliness of the dish and leave a clean feeling on your palate. Tannin can do the same job; if you are choosing a red wine to match an oily dish - cheese fondue, for example - it will need to be fairly tannic to avoid tasting flabby.
- Smoky Dishes Clash With Oaky Wines: Oak and smoke, in my opinion, is just too much of a good thing to make a good match. If you try to pair an oaked wine with a smoked meat or fish dish you are in danger of overpowering your taste buds with too many very similar smoky, oaky flavours, so that they will not be able to recognize anything else. Also, smoky dishes, by definition, have a strong flavour, and strong flavours in food need to be matched with a crisply fruity wine that refreshes the palate. Oaked wines have an oiliness and opulence that do not help to do so. White grapes to look out for that should guarantee an oak-free zone include Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chenin Blanc, and the Pinots Blanc and Gris (Pinot Grigio in Italy). For smoked meats, choose from my Lively, Fruity Reds category: any more tannin, however soft, may join forces with the smoked flavours to create a "hard", woody taste.
- Match Rich, Dense Flavours With Similar Wines: If your chosen dish is rich because it is creamy, try a crisp white wine to cut through the richness and refresh the palate. But rich dishes with greater weight and intensity of flavour normally require wines whose flavours and body pack a similar punch. If the wine is too light it can be overpowered by the flavours and textures in the food. There are some classic extravagant pairings of food with white wine in this vein - foie gras and Sauternes and, less often served these days, lobster Thermidor with a Corton Charlemagne white Burgundy. But in the main we are talking rich, dense reds to partner hearty meat dishes here, especially those based on game or offal, where you need a wine with good complexity of flavour to compete on equal terms.
- Spicy Dishes Need Refreshing Wines: Some people find that spicy dishes can overwhelm lighter styles of wine and prefer to match them with richer or even sweeter wines. I find that Chinese dishes generally work well with aromatic whites, such as German Riesling or Alsace Gewurztraminer, while more spicy Eastern cuisine benefits from being partnered with quite simple, crisp, dry whites, such as New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or - the best choices in my view - a Pinot Grigio or a Chablis. These wines help to refresh the palate. Curry is not easy to match with wine. There are some good white partners for the lighter, more fragrant curries, but beware of ordering reds: most curries tend to knock back the fruit in a red wine, so the tannins become dominant. If the food is extremely spicy it may be better to - just this once - forget the wine and stick to water or beer.
- Match White Meats with Full Whites or Light Reds: The flavours in white meats are, on the whole, much more subtle than those in red meats, and so chicken, pork, and turkey dishes in which the meat is roasted, poached, or grilled in quite a simple style, rather than heavily flavoured or richly sauced, work really well with more subtle wines, such as light reds. However, over the last few years, there has certainly been a trend for whites to become fuller and more opulent, especially the big, oaky-fruity New World wines, and these heavier whites have also proved good partners for white meat dishes, probably because their complex aromas and oily opulence balances and harmonizes with the mellow flavours in the meat.
- Red Meats can Take on Strong Tannins: For lamb cutlets or shepherd's pie, I'd choose a fruity Merlot-based wine, but heavier fare gives bigger-bodied reds a chance to shine. Protein-rich food softens the tannin in red wine so that the fruit flavours are able to come to the fore more easily. Red meats can therefore be successfully matched with big, strong reds with firm s w . tannins without you having to worry that the fruit in the wine will be overpowered. Cheese also has a similar effect on wine; the tannins are absorbed and the wine tastes more mellow and easy to enjoy. The more austere tannic wines can be made much more food-friendly by decanting; temperature helps too - serve them slightly warmer than usual.
- Match Wine to Sauces, Not What´s Underneath: The maxim "red wine with dark meat, white wine with light" is a little misleading; most wines can, in fact, be served with most meats. When trying to make the perfect wine and food match, it is much more likely to be the sauce served with the meat, be it chicken or beef, that takes precedence. Lemon chicken, for example, goes well with a Chablis from Burgundy, but the same wine would never be a good match for coq au vin, which needs a fruity, unoaked, lightly tannic red. Similarly, a steak au poivre needs a medium-bodied, low-tannin red, but a beef goulash can be matched with a ripe, full- bodied, fruity white. With wine-based sauces, it's often true that the wine you cook the dish with makes the perfect acccompaniment to the meal, which makes life a little easier.
- Match Desserts with their Weight in Wien: The weight and sweetness of a dessert wine needs to match the weight and sweetness of the dessert. It's obvious really — would you want to drink the same wine with a raspberry fool as you do with a sticky toffee pudding? It may sound unlikely but it's true that the intensity of sweetness in a sticky toffee pudding can be enhanced by a really rich, sweet dessert wine; if you tried to drink a light, flowery wine with it, you can easily imagine that the flavours in one would destroy the flavours in the other. Don't forget, however, that sparkling wines can also be perfect matches for fruity summer desserts, particularly the semi¬dry and sweeter styles. And strawberries have an affinity with red and rosé wine, particularly if the wine also has strawberry flavours. Try them with a light Beaujolais, a blush Zinfandei, or even a sweet, sparkling red Lambrusco.