I had a great evening on Wednesday. I went along to an event organised by the Bristol Slow Food group at the 3 Coqs in Bristol. It was a four course dinner with a wine flight of biodynamic wines.
If like me, you haven’t come across the term before, it’s worth a little explanation: Biodynamic wines are essentially naturally produced wines. Although there is a slightly spiritual element to the ethos behind it, the main principles are around natural growing, and not including all the additives that almost all commercial wine produces users (to preserve, clear and flavour the wine). The result (as I can testify from the evening) is wine that has a lot of character (it’s not flavour-enhanced for a particular taste), is gown sustainably and naturally, and does not give you a headache the next day even when you’ve had a lot of it! The real surprise to me was to hear how so much wine is produced with additives to give it flavour (so that vanilla, herb or spice note you get with your wine could well actually be vanilla, herb or spice!) The best (and worst) thing about the evening is that from the talks and tasting was they I now realise the difference between these natural wines and the commercial ones – the bad part is that it has some what put me off of commercial wines! (We’ll see how long that lasts…)
It was a fun evening and I met some great people including the 3 “coqs” themselves (the chefs) and the wine experts giving the talks. The food was great (the chew magna summer vegetables with chilli citrus dressing and various goats cheeses was great, especially with the selected wine), as was the lamb rump with anchovies and capers).
Thanks to:
The 3 Coqs: Chris Wicks, Jonathon Mackeson and David Daly (threecoqsbrasserie.com)
The win experts: David Harvey and Raj Soni
And promoters Navina and Marti for letting me know about it!