Wine tastings often mean pushy salesmen persuading you to buy plonk you didn’t even like that much. So it was with some trepidation that I recently attended a tasting at Faringdon company Den Boer Wines, but it was a completely different and very pleasant experience.
Donna Rogers is the brains behind Den Boer Wines and she bases her themed tasting nights on the “cellar door” experiences she enjoyed in her native Australia. Working from home, Donna’s tasting room has the atmosphere of an authentic wine cellar, all bare brick walls, beams and a blazing woodburner. It’s an intimate, warm and welcoming space, perfect for small groups to relax and enjoy tasting the various wines on offer – though Donna tells me she’s had as many as twenty people in there at times!
Fortunately we’re a much smaller group tonight, about half a dozen of us, which means the wine goes further – never a bad thing! We chat amongst ourselves before Donna starts the evening by opening a bottle of sparkling wine, a Michel Torino Extra Brut 2006 from Argentina. As we take our first sips Donna tells us about its origins and explains that the size of the bubble is an indicator of the wine’s quality – and the bubbles in this one are tiny, creating more of a tingle than a fizz.
It’s now that Donna reveals her secret weapon – this evening doesn’t just involve wine, we’re also invited to try a range of simple yet tasty dishes which harmonise with the drink to bring out the flavours. The first dish is chicken salsa wraps and she’s right, you know – the right food really does complement the wine.
As the evening progresses we’re introduced to a variety of South American wines, all accompanied by delicious morsels of food. We discuss our personal favourites and surprisingly, although I favour red wine, my pick of the evening is the Torrontes, an Argentinian white. Served with home-baked asparagus and camembert puffs – all sourced and produced locally – it was spicy and warm with a hint of strawberries – or was it pear drops? The jury’s still out on that one! Throughout, Donna entertains us with nuggets of wine history, tips and tricks from the wine trade and anecdotal stories involving wine.
At the end of the evening, six wines wiser, several pounds heavier and just very slightly tipsy, Donna mentions that all the wine we’ve tasted is available to buy. There’s no pressure and I could easily have walked away empty-handed … but it would have been a shame not to share some with my husband, wouldn’t it!
Donna runs regular wine tasting evenings and full details are on her website, www.denboerwines.com . Coming up in the next few weeks is A Taste of Australia (Feb 7th), Mystery Wines (April 1st) and a special Pottery and Wine evening on 13th March when you can paint your own wine cooler whilst tasting wine.
