May Day 2010

We had some friends over for lunch yesterday, coinciding with the start of the bank holiday weekend, a very nice way to kick-off a three-day weekend. We had planned to eat out in the garden, and managed to stay ahead of the rain for most of the meal.

As an aperitif, we served Gruet Brut along with some homemade spiced nuts. My husband and I had tried the blanc de blanc by this maker in the US two years ago - it had caught our attention because the wine is made in New Mexico, and we were surprised by how good it was for what is not a well-known wine-making region. The Brut was also nice, good bubbles and some crisp citrus fruit flavours, but not a long finish.

Following that, we opened a bottle of Bruno Paillard NPU 1990 to go with our starter of mango and avocado salad with passion fruit dressing. My husband gave me this champagne for Christmas last year - it's a low-dosage champage from a wonder year. You could see the age of the wine from its dark, honey-ish colour and could taste it in the depth of its flavour, full of orchard fruit and bits of woody vanilla that lingered in your mouth. I'm glad we shared this bottle with friends as it's not something you come across often, but well worth drinking.

We moved to some gorgeous white burgundy wines for our grilled lobster and cheese courses, and then back to champagne with our dessert of almond, fig, and chocolate cake accompanied by sugared figs. With this, we had a bottle of Taittinger Brut Reserve that one of our friends had brought over, which was a perfect match to the figgy dessert with its fresh vanilla and biscuit flavours and classic, fine bubbles. Funnily enough, over our dessert we learned that we had both visited the Taittinger vineyards when we took separate trips to the Champagne region and really enjoyed the tour both for what we learned and also for the hospitality and good-naturedness of the winemakers - a hot tip if you're heading to that area!