26 June 2011: We’re in England this week, trying to squeeze in a bit of holiday after attending the wedding of a dear friend’s daughter in Oxfordshire. It was a wedding, perfect in every sense, taking place in the most glorious picture-perfect setting, against the backdrop of Home County valleys, a sun-stroked patchwork of fields and meadows. The English summer did not disappoint - after a rather gloomy start to the day, it returned to full glory and delighted the wedding guests with glowing warmth and bright sunlight. The bride organised the whole thing herself, with the occasional help from mother! It was so thoughtfully and tastefully organised……there was an ice-cream van “selling” ice-cream to the children, an oyster shucker hard at work at the Irish rocks, real wood fires inside the tipees, a tree of really yummy cup cakes, instead of the traditional wedding cake, and a crêperie (and coffee) van to keep us going till the small hours when the couple would retire to their honeymoon! Nick very kindly organised for us to stay with his neighbours, Andrew and Fiona, who live down the road from his house. Apart from a little difficulty in finding the car, we got back in little time to a nice warm bed at their lovely home and woke up to a very hot English summer morning!
We took advantage of the time between breakfast and hog roast back at Nick’s to visit a local winery - The Chiltern Valley Winery. It was fascinating to try these grape varieties that I had only read about….Schönburger, Huxelrebe, Müller-Thurgau and Bacchus….and they weren’t too bad at all! I was quite impressed by a dessert wine made with Huxelrebe, made sweet by stopping the fermentation by chilling – good complexity, not too cloying and nice finish – would go well with a mature cheddar or blue cheese. All the wines, ranging from dry to sweet, were only 10.5%, which was rather refreshing, compared with today’s norm of 14%! As the grapes are locally sourced, each year the winery would use a different grape variety or blend for different wines. We also tried a Mead – made famous by Harry Potter! I have yet to acquire the taste for Mead – better stick to the dessert wine for now. (I managed to pack a few bottles of English wine into my suitcase - just about the only shopping I did the whole week!)
After thanking our hosts for a most hospitable weekend, we left Buckinghamshire and drove onto Derbyshire, where we would spend the following day visiting Chatsworth and Haddon Hall.
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