Garcés Silva Vineyard Tasting Supper

Last night we had another amazing wine supper, this one hosted by Matias Garcés Silva from Garcés Silva Vineyards (one of the family members who started this vineyard).

The first vineyards were planted in 1999, and three years later construction was finished on a winery equipped with the latest technology – an unprecedented event in the Leyda Valley. Finally, in 2003 the family made their first wine: Amayna. The Garcés-Silva family and its Amayna wines have earned worldwide recognition over the years and have demonstrated their passion for high quality and innovative wine production. http://www.vgs.cl

The vineyards and cellars in Chile.
The vineyards and cellars in Chile.

We chose the wines and then we created a menu to match the fantastic wines. We tasted three wines from the Boya range (Boya being the Spanish for buoy – a salute to the wine’s oceanic origins) and two wines from the Amayna range (“amayna” in Chile loosely translates to “the calm after the storm”).

The wine & food menu for the evening.
The wine & food menu for the evening.

The winners of the evening, apart from Matias of course, were the Amayna Barrel Fermented Sauvignon (Chilean Sauvignon Blanc but not as you know it!) & the Amayna Syrah, both were huge crowd pleasers.

Matias captivating his audience
Matias captivating his audience

Amayna 2

Matias, Jose & Dave at the end of a very successful evening.
Matias, Jose & Dave at the end of a very successful evening.

If you would like to be informed about our next tasting supper, then please join the Camber Wines mailing list on our website www.camberwines.co.uk then click on the link on our home page. #tastingevents #winewednesday #sippingsaturday

Antinori Wine Supper

After the craziness that was Christmas we are back to normality now. There is only #wetjanuary here!

Earlier this week we held one of our ever popular wine suppers. This one was hosted by Luca Soldo, Ambassador for Antinori Wines in Italy.

Antinori menu
Wine & food menu for the evening

The Antinori family has been involved in the production of wine for over six centuries, ever since, in 1385, Giovanni di Piero Antinori entered as a member, the “Arte Fiorentina”, the Winemakers’ Guild of the city of Florence.
Today the firm is run by Marquis Piero Antinori with the support of his three daughters, Albiera, Allegra, and Alessia, directly involved in the work of the house. Tradition, passion, and intuition have been the three driving principles which have led the Marquis Antinori firm to become a leader in Italian wine. http://www.antinori.it

This evening was a great success with fantastic wines and beautiful food to compliment each wine served.

Antinori 2
Antinori evening in full swing

A very generous customer of ours also found a couple of bottles of extremely old Antinori Chianti Classico in their cellar and donated them to us so we could do a raffle for our chosen charity … The Rowans Hospice.

Antinori 4
Two bottles donated by one of our customers, 1964 & 1966 Chianti Classicos.

We managed to raise £200 and both the lucky winners were born in the year of the wine that they won … Amazing coincidence!

A great night was had by all.

The next supper in our diary is 9th March #winewednesday

Exton Park Vineyard Visit

On Tuesday 29th September, a group of us from abarbistro spent a very pleasant morning amidst the vines of Exton Park Vineyard; thanks Jose, for organising! Exton Park is set on the slopes of wild roaming chalk lands in the heart of Hampshire.

We were greeted by Fred Langdale, the vineyard manager, and Mark Ferguson, sales manager.

Fred oozed with enthusiasm as he started to tell us all about Exton. The terroir is a mirror image of that found in the actual Champagne region…so it was decided that they should focus on sparkling wines. As a result, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier were planted in 2003, and the vineyard has developed since then. There are now over 100,00 vines.

We learnt about nurturing the vines, picking the grapes, and making the actual juice. We were shown the cellar store, and introduced to other team members.

Then the most exciting part…we tasted the fruits of all their efforts; Exton Park Brut, Blanc de Noirs and Rose. All really delicious, elegant and bubbly…..and of course English through and through.

It goes without saying, that we are selling the wine in Camber Wines!

peter lehmann wine supper

on tuesday 18th august we hosted another of our fantastic wine tasting suppers. this time we were lucky enough to have joe roberts from peter lehmann wines hosting. we started with the layers White as an aperitif which went down a storm, and is now served by the glass in the restaurant.

PL Tasting 3PL tasting 2

this was followed with some great food and wine matching with the hill & valley riesling served with crab & apple tian, hill & valley shiraz with spicy beef noodles, mentor cabernet sauvignon with confit duck leg and finishing with peter lehmann botrytis Semillon which was matched perfectly with peach & frangipane tart.

our chef preparing the peach & frangipane tarts.
our chef preparing the peach & frangipane tarts

we would like to thank joe for his laid back but very informative presentation. also nigel gilling from @liberty_wines for helping to organise this event.

the work has begun!

we are currently in the process of some exciting refurbishments!

our builders have been working hard from 5am everyday for the last two weeks to help us raise the profile of camber wines, our wine shop upstairs.

huge changes were made on the first day by knocking down walls and opening up the stair way and entrance to make our hidden treasure more accessible.

goodbye walls

we hope for the work to be completed  next week – come and have a look!

see below for the progress so far….

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casual dining 2015

on wednesday 25th february, amber and steve popped up to london to attend the best uk trade show, casual dining. the show displayed 150 exhibitors and is a great opportunity to purchase or enquire about ncd2ew products or business ideas.

we enjoyed ourselves (and the freebies) and found the show brilliant for innovation and just a chance to spruce up our existing products, including our new luscombe drink flavours and stokes remoulade- a great addition to our abar club sandwich!

well done to all involved, see you next year..

italian wine tour

our dave has spent the last 4 days in lomardia , northern italy experiencing the fruits of the franciacorta region. in a nutshell, as champagne is to france and cava is to spain, so franciacorta is to Italy. this incredible sparkling wine is a relatively new kid on the block but is made with a passion and expertise that he hasn’t seen anywhere else in the world. made in the bottle in a process that can take anything from 24 – 72 months with the familiar grapes of chardonnay, pinot noir (nero) and pinot blanc (bianco), the wine is often pure and very modern in style. many young wine makers are experimenting alongside some seasoned vintners to produce stunning results. it’s not cheap, and we don’t mention prosecco in the same sentence as this wine is seriously”top drawer”. watch out for our listing from azienda agricola ferghettina very soon. some perfect bubbles for the Italian americas cup crew to celebrate coming in as runners up to ben ainslies british crew in the forthcoming july races here in portsmouth!

we love wine!

so, on tuesday 11th feb, me (amber), jose and dave travelled up to london for berkmann wine cellars annual portfolio tasting held in the grand connaught rooms- a beautiful building might I add.

for those of you who aren’t familiar with wine tasting events like these, wine suppliers such as berkmann, hold these events so people like us and other wine purchasers can sample all of the wines available and decide if they want to add or expand on their already existing wine selections.

it’s a great way to compare and contrast on wines that you would rarely be able to taste one after the other. we tried lots of different wines and a few caught our attention so keep your eyes open for some potential new additions to the camber wine stock 😉

tip: spit the wine. (the majority)

wino

what an evening!

so, firstly, we hope everyone had a lovely christmas and didn’t over indulge too much…who are we kidding… we politely request that we do not see another roses or quality street for at least 3 months!

anyway, more importantly, we want to say a massive thank you to everyone that attended our annual ‘carols on the camber’. it was our biggest turn out to date and was a huge success.

the mulled wine went down a storm and the singing was beautiful. overall, a great time had by all.

we are already planning how next years carols are going to be bigger and better so make sure we see you all next year for a good festive sing song!