Marie & Denis Chevassu Cotes du Jura Chardonnay '08

c. £14

As legacy-killers go dying in public in an improbable but slightly
amusing accident on Friday 13th is right up there with writing an
autobiograpgy of your time as a DEFRA minister, or a paedophilia charge.

No matter how many starving African children you've rescued from
burning buildings in the last six months, you're always going to be
the person who fell down the stairs of the number 88 'cos you were
googling the clap on your phone or was poisoned by a rogue platypus as you
took lunch at the zoo cafe.

With this in mind I cleverly decided to stay at home all day and drink
Chardonnay.

Chardonnay is a barometer grape. A taste for it neatly divides the
world into those you may want to drink with and others who should be
drowned in a butt of Sauvignon.

The Jura is a barometer region. 'Though it divides the world into
insufferable wine geeks, and normal people who haven't heard of it.

A tricky one this then, and consequently best drunk in bed at 3pm when
there's unlikely to be anyone else there.

There's not much info out there regarding Denis and Marie Chevassu's
operation but they appear to make varietal wines from all five grapes
permitted by the area's AOC*. And at
least one merchant claims the elevage of this Chardonnay is sous voile,
'though I'd probably call that particular claim.

On the nose there's big concentration of honeysuckle and cream and a
richer toffee pudding note. The palate cuts through with a pretty
searing acid streak, lemons, melons.

At the price this is an outstanding bargain. There's proper
delineation and varietal typicity here.

But the anchovies and raw onion I ate for lunch were about the last
food left in the house. Which now means I am a little drunk and
probably needing to go to the shops to buy food.

See you in the obituary pages.


* Chardonnay, Savagnin, Pinot Noir, Trousseau, Ploussard. Open goal.

Ridgeview Bloomsbury 2007

Waitrose, £20.00

At about 6 o'clock on Friday morning I had a broken leg. After a couple of hours and three X-Rays this had been downgraded to a combination of torn cartilage and 'funny-shaped bones'.

The previous evening had been a strange one: I recovered temporarily from an early fall to enjoy some ping-pong and a wildly successful trip to a Mayfair casino. But the £300 winnings were beginning to weigh me down, and by the time we left I could barely walk.

At around 4am I abandoned my intention of going to Cornwall for the weekend and made like a snail for Accident and Emergency.

The croupiers may have been kind earlier, but in life I was limping in. Distinctly unamused by the earlier diagnosis, I needed some form of invigorating tonic to re-establish perkiness to my sleep-deprived body.

English sparkling wine has been enjoying a stellar few years. Down in the South both the soil and the globally warmed climate are similar to that of Champagne, and in the best years all three grapes can ripen nicely. It's even rumoured that Champagne houses are buying up land here.

The headline news at last year's Decanter Wine Awards was that an English fizz, Ridgeview's 2006 Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs, had taken top prize in the Champagne and Sparkling wine category.

The Grosvenor is, obviously, all Chardonnay. Mine on the other hand was Ridgeview’s 'Bloomsbury', which adds Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier to give the full Champenois menage.

The Decanter judges found the Grosevenor to have 'plenty of elan'. Which is no doubt reassuring for the hopelessly pretentious amongst us. But I have no time for dictionaries, and wanted to get on to the bottle in hand...

Initially it has a light mineral nose, but not much going on.

A fine-ish mousse. Very champagne-y on the palate with loads of citrus acid. Lovely breadiness comes through on the nose once it opens up. There's lots of fruit but to my mind not enough body for the acidity. Gimme a granule more sugar in the dosage or a billion barrels of crude to burn, and this'll be a cracking wine.

It's young tasting and I'd like to see it in a few years, but still fizzily good for both body and mind, especially at the price.

If I could walk I might go buy another.

Montes Alpha 2008

Majestic, £12.50

My Father is a proud man, and wont to take umbrage at the slightest of slights. So needless to say it did not go unnoticed when I recently accused him of being a hoarder of oxidised-looking white Burgundy.

A commendable attempt to set the record straight last week saw a bottle of 1990 Duvergey Taboureau Chassagne-Montrachet make its way from the dusty recesses of his rack and into a fridge for judgment.

On opening the cork was sodden and mouldy, the liquid: Morning-After Yellow. Horribly oxidised.

Happily the next generation was on hand, to redeem the sins of the previous. I am a hedger and a fixer so had cleverly chilled a bottle of Montes Alpha's superb 2008 Chardonnay in case of this thoroughly prectable emergency.

It's seen a little oak and this is apparent on the nose along with some green fruit and a little minerality.

Loads of acid and a bit of astringency (probably) from the oak, backed by a touch of lovely honeyed sweetness and tropical fruit as it warms. Lemons and star fruit, and a swish long finish.

Buying remission has never been cheaper, or more delicious.

Macia Batle Blanc de Blancs 2009

World of Wines, £15

We had only known each other a few short hours but I was beginning to think Marjorie might be The One. She didn't say much, but then she didn't cost much either, and many would consider both of these attractive qualities.

I may have woken that morning in another woman's bed but by mid-afternoon Marjorie and I had already drunk ourselves silly in Camden, eaten salt beef in Stockwell, seen away a bottle of good-ish Marcillac and attempted to buy a house next to a nightclub. The initial outlay was diminutive, but keeping her in the manner to which she was rapidly becoming accustomed was clearly going to put a dent in the wallet.

All this fun had put me in an adventurous mood and so, mid-way through the first Snakebite of the day, I left her in the capable hands of my Northern Irish friend to embark on a speculative mission to the nearby Wines of the World.

A sparse and indistinct selection yielded a single diamond amongst the rough- Macia Batle's 2009 Blanc de Blancs. Comically overpriced at £15 (around 6 euro in Mallorca if I recall), but nevertheless an essential purchase.

Along with Jose L Ferrer, Macia Batle is one of the giants of Binissalem D.O. Although the winery in its present state has only existed since 1996, it has rapidly made a name for wines at all price points, and is leading the way amongst the larger producers on the island for Moll-dominated whites. I remember being slightly disappointed by the '07 Crianza last summer, but buoyed by the benign influence of my decollated friend I was confident the Blanc de Blancs would justify the vineyard’s reputation.

This proved sadly misplaced. The wine itself is lean and green, with raspy acidity and little sugar despite only getting to 12.5% alcohol. Flowers on the nose are overwhelmed by oak, which comes through on both the nose and palate and makes the Chardonnay all the more apparent. An interesting wine, not bad, but certainly unbalanced.

No grape in the world wouldn't ripen in Mallorca's reliably hot, dry summers. But after the feast of San Bernado on August 20th things start getting a little more unpredictable; torrential wind and apocalyptic rain is not unknown in the first few weeks of September. The harvest is a crapshoot.

The Binissalem Regulatory Council rates the 2009 vintage as 'Excellent', but I reckon something spooked Macia Batle into picking a little early... This Blanc de Blanc seems a tad under-ripe, and has a slight bitter finish. They've lumped on the oak to try to disguise this, but it ruins the aromatics of the Moll, leaving an astringent Chardonnay.

The wine stands as metaphor for our whirlwind romance. Zippy, unhinged, bittersweet and expensive, but ultimately lacking depth.

Notting Hill Brasserie

92 Kensington Park Road, London. £150 for two including wine

As I suspected he might do, TOD met my latest arrival in West London with some violent and suspicious behaviour.

The area's cartographers, some deaf people, and a young lady who happened to be standing where he wanted to be, all came under attack. But particular vehemence was reserved for a woman sitting next to us in a pub who was wearing a preposterous hat.

The lobotomy of TOD's social conscience has led to a game in which he enjoys loudly speculating to himself about the dress sense, moral integrity and relative unintelligence of those in his immediate vicinity. And this regrettably-hatted woman had the great misfortune last Saturday of entering it.

She and her companion left half their drinks.

Having known him for far too long than is good for me, I understand that this kind of behaviour is in fact his way of expressing quite how happy he is with his lot. However, at this point, I was rather regretting stoking this particular fire by bringing him a lovely postcard of an umbrella shop as a gift.

Several pints of bitter later, we pointed ourselves in the direction of the Notting Hill Brasserie, TOD having begun the first of the day's many efforts to leave his postcard in a pub.

Good Espresso Martinis at the bar were enhanced by conversation with a charming and knowledgeable barman concerning his trade, before we made our way to a grand and almost entirely empty dining room.

I was prepared for the intimidating feel of the place having earlier purchased a smart handmade umbrella which lent a considerable gravitas to my operation, but it was clear that my umbrella-less companion was a little non-u.

I went for the excellent value £15.50 set lunch, whilst TOD opted a la carte because he wanted a rich and satisfying lobster and scallop starter.

My own starter comprised five melty medallions of pretty well completely raw tuna perched on a salad-y thing, which added a satisfying crunchiness, but little in the way of flavour. Delicate and unpretentious.

After the starters were cleared the excellent barman returned to give TOD back his postcard, which I was now beginning to suspect he probably wasn't responsible enough to look after properly.

For mains TOD enjoyed a high-quality fillet steak, but this was effortlessly trumped by my own braised beef cheek, which oozed a rich umami savouriness.

Earlier TOD had cemented his burgeoning reputation as a selector of poor wine, by ordering a glass of pretty dilute and indistinct Argentinean Chardonnay as an aperitif. Luckily my own choice of a bottle of Dolcetto D'Alba was sound, the wine full of bright racy cherries, and just enough body and structure to stand up to the beef .

A very decent, if diminutive, cheese plate preceded coffees and the bill. It was a good and precisely cooked meal served with a welcome side portion of surreal created by the design of the place, and a staff to customer ratio that can't have been too shy of 10:1.

We made our way back to the Earl of Lonsdale via an unsuccessful attempt to buy a sword from a man with a pony-tail ("Probably not the sword for you mate." after I told him that I just wanted a sword to walk into a pub with).

At some point later TOD lost his postcard.

Electric House

191 Portobello Road, London £???

We decided upon lunch at the Electric on what was clearly the back-end of a very long and very successful run of excellent decision-making. But before eating it was obvious that we required a hat for the otherwise preposterously dressed CV - a man not entirely equipped to deal with the sartorial rigour demanded by West London. His hat's raisin of debt was not merely to complement my hat, but also to furnish him with an early Christmas present worthy of our longstanding friendship-cum-rivalry, and to secure his safe passage through the members-only doorway of the Electric.

Actually completing the purchase of a hat proved beyond our abilities at the time, although we did make it as far as having one gift-wrapped in All Saints (prior to beating the hastiest of retreats), and also incurred the wrath of a man whose top hats were revealed (by some pretty rigorous testing) to lack the structural integrity implied by their £40 price tag. The aforementioned merchant also accused CV of being drunk, or possibly of being a fully-fledged drunkard - clearly here was a man of great insight & integrity, and he was not to be trifled with.

But I digress, let me set the record straight about how we came to be in Electric House. The name that I used to secure access for CV & myself was not made up, as his insane ramblings below would suggest. The name we used was wilfully purloined, and - in the events that followed - probably also blackened.

Without the hat, gaining entry to Electric House was going require even more derring-do and subterfuge than we had accounted for. There was one brief moment at which the success of the entire venture hung in the balance: the otherwise charming young lady on the door felt compelled to remark upon the fact that I possess considerably shorter hair than the man whose photo popped up when I deployed my stolen name at the appropriate time.

A look of grave terror came over CV's face at the thought of what might become of two plucky adventurers caught in the act of deception, but luckily I was able to employ some quick thinking and skilfully deflected her subtle probing with an oblique reference to the excellence of my hat - we were on our way into the heart of the Forbidden Kingdom!

In reference to CV's review - I concur entirely on the food, and am even willing to defer to him on the wine in this case. I can shed no more light than my companion on the nature of the third dish, but I certainly enjoyed the chicken livers. Electric House, though, is one of those places that you do not really go to for the quality of the food. The atmosphere and the service are what bring in the crowds.

I don't think enough emphasis can be placed on the extent to which our waitress was both charming and long-suffering. Quite how long-suffering is a matter of debate, and one that can probably only be settled with recourse to close-circuit television, or possibly police reports. In any case, she was lovely, if not quite as disposed to furnish me with her number as I had hoped.

The Electric Brasserie downstairs offers more of the same, and more importantly has the advantage of being open to non-members. If you are not of a brazen disposition, and prefer your dining experiences to come sans outlandish acts of deception or forced entry, this may be the option for you.

The menu is near-identical to that in the club, the food every bit as consistent, and the service just as friendly. They are also blessed with the prettiest pair of hostesses that you are ever likely to come across. They certainly aren't knockout, Eastern-European-hooker beautiful like the hostesses at the superb Japanese restaurants that abound in Mayfair and Knightsbridge, but their general encouraging friendliness really does lift the mood in the inevitable 10 - 20 minute queue for a table.

All in all a successfully executed dining operation. The front of house staff may have gently prodded us in the direction of the door as a result of various aspects of my conduct, but they did so the most cordial manner possible, and I have no doubt we would be welcomed with open arms should we choose to venture there again.

Highly recommended.

TOD

Electric House

191 Portobello Road, London. £???

Disclaimer – At the very best the objectivity of this review should be doubted. What we ate, drank, and indeed whether we were actually there at all are all matters of some debate.

First of all it should be noted that Electric House is a private club, part of the Soho House Group, with sister venues in such retro-glamourous locations as New York and Berlin. This particular establishment was less salubriously located behind an unmarked door on Portobello Road, though within convenient reeling distance of a Sam Smith's pub.

In theory one should be a creative new-media type on an informal networking lunch and a paid-up member of the Group in order to gain entry, so what follows will probably be of little use to anybody bored enough to continue. However this is, in fact, no barrier to lunch, assuming you are a tenacious sort. Put on a good hat, storm in, hastily scribble a made up name and signature and run upstairs to the bar for some Espresso Martinis. Which is what we did.

The restaurant was curiously busy for a Friday afternoon, but TOD was quick to mark out territory by shouting loudly about an important call he was expecting and forcing a frankly scared-looking barman to look after his phone.

Once it had become apparent that we weren’t leaving, we were seated in good time having polished off our aperitifs at the bar.

The menu has a fair breadth of starters, mains and various bar snack type things, three of which we ordered; chicken livers on toast, fishcakes, and something else.

TOD also plumped for a bottle of Meursault, as part of an ongoing campaign to drag me through his inexplicable fondness for white Burgundy. There may have been some bread and/ or olives involved at some point before our charming and long-suffering waitress brought the food.

The livers were mouth-fillingly rich and rather tasty, the fishcakes unmistakably that and served with a white dip which I recall quite liking. It was doubtless Tartare, or some variant thereof, but in the interest of journalistic integrity all I can say with absolute certainty is that it was white.

I don’t imagine the third plate was much cop as neither of us have any recollection of it whatsoever above the fact that it existed. The wine was jadingly typical, 'though not, if I recall, subjected to a horrific mark-up.

We enjoyed coffees, and I whiled away pleasant half hour watching TOD on a concerted but predictably fruitless mission to extract our waitress' phone number. As he began to lapse in and out of consciousness it became clear that it was time to make a move. Unburdened by the credit card we had left at the bar, we made a fleet-footed escape.

If all this sounds a little damning-with-faint-praise, let me assure you that Electric House is actually a superlative eating experience. The food is good, the ambience buzzy and pleasant and the staff met behaviour that must have pushed the limits of credulity with an heroic stoicism.

*If anyone from Electric House ever happens to come across this review, please feel free to contact me with any revisions or clarifications you may have. Especially if you know what the third dish was.*