Sunshine, water travels, rich reds, folly...
Tasting notes from our Read Between the Wines spring
We’ve been so lucky the last two months - sunshine and wine and good words and good people. We’ve taken Read Between the Wines over the water twice; once to the Roseland, as part of the glorious Roseland Festival in St Mawes, and once to The Isles of Scilly for a different take on the way we do things; fiction-musing in a shoreside vineyard with unique wines inspiring our story choice.
Instead of a full set of tasting notes this time, we’ve picked one wine highlight from each for a flavour of what the evenings held. Also some news about our next gathering, when, where, why… enjoy!
Roseland Festival
Story: ‘Yoruba Man Walking’, by Bernardine Evaristo, as featured in Closure (Peepal Tree, 2015)
Evaristo’s masterful and expansive short centres around Lawani, a sailor who comes to shore in nineteenth century Cornwall and attempts to make a life, meeting and marrying a balmaiden and setting to work in the mines. It’s a world populated with complex characters that explores important, prescient themes of otherness, heritage, love, loss and prejudice through lean prose, powerful imagery and a fully realised world that sings with scent, sound and flavour.
It’s a story of oppositional forces and tensions – set up in the contrast between the ocean and the moor, and followed through in people’s attitudes towards Lawani, which create an underlying and constant sense of unease, fully realised in its incredible (and on the night, it would seem controversial) ending.
Pairing highlight, Wine 3: Bertus Fourie Barista Pinotage, South Africa
13% ABV
Grape: 100% Pinotage
A complex wine full of depth and flavour. This particular Pinotage is made by the legendary winemaker, Bertus Fourie. He’s nicknamed ‘Starbucks’ for his exceptional skill in drawing out the coffee-like aromas of South Africa's signature grape, expertly showcased in this modern offering. The wine hails from the Val de Vie estate in the heart of the cape winelands, where wine production dates back to 1825. Harvested at optimum ripeness from specific vineyards across the Western Cape, the grapes undergo fermentation in stainless steel tanks with regular pump overs to ensure the perfect extraction.
Aromas
Intense nose of coffee and chocolate with a subtle savoury hint
Ripe mulberries, juicy plums and maraschino cherries
Sweet vanilla
Smoke and cigars
Rubber / tyres
Leather
Taste
Complexity from oak aging – vanilla, smokiness
Stewed, cooked red / black fruits
Tons of coffee
Pleasantly long and spicy finish
Ripe tannins, perfectly suiting the mouth-filling plum and mulberry
Why Lucy chose this wine to pair with the story:
“I needed something rich and complex, a layered wine to match the many layers of the story. I also wanted something that defied expectation and played with contrast in the same way the story does, not to mention capturing a sense of the dark undertone that runs throughout (but particularly in the gut punch of the ending). On a more literal note, the rubber, coffee and cocoa notes reflect some of the goods Lawani transported around the world before settling in Cornwall, while the wine’s smokiness brings us right into the taverns where he sits drinking porter and stout and telling the tall tales locals seek from him.”
If you’re interested in sampling the other wines paired with ‘Yoruba Man Walking’, here they are:
Wine 2: Edna Valley Pinot Noir, California , a light and silky fruit-forward Pinot Noir, with accents of pepper, toasted caramel and tart pomegranate.
Wine 1: LB7 Vinho Verde, Portugal , playful and refreshing, a zesty wine with a light fizz, grassy florals on the nose and buckets of lemon and lime zing on the palate.
“Its memory lies in the leaves that tremble in the light. It lies in the pollen, gold and grey which the bees collect and carry with them from flower to flower…”
From ‘Flowers’ by Emma Timpany
Creative Scilly, St Martins Vineyard
Less than a month after the Roseland Festival we were setting sail 28 miles off Cornwall’s tip to host an afternoon amongst the vines as part of the Creative Scilly festival. Invited by Holly and James of St Martin’s Vineyard, we took the opportunity to learn more about their regenerative approach to small batch winemaking, sample their wares and be inspired.
As the wines were already in hand, this time we flipped our Read Between the Wines formula and looked for a piece of short fiction to pair with the flavours and stories of the wine, rather than the other way round. Luckily, it was easy to find the perfect match.
Story: ‘Flowers’, by Emma Timpany, part of the newly released Botanical Short Stories collection (History Press, 2024)
Timpany’s subtle, contemplative ‘Flowers’ follows a reluctant flower grower as she strikes up an agreement with an unwell man, to grow flowers in one of his fields. Over the year, (and on) their friendship, builds, evolves and moves as the flowers take root, grow and fade. It’s a subtle, reflective and quietly powerful story about healing, survival and hope, with a landscape, themes and subject matter (St Martins Vineyard used to be a flower farm) that are so wonderfully connected to Scilly and the vineyard itself, we couldn’t not choose it.
Pairing highlight, Wine 3: Folly Wine
12% ABV
Grape: None! This wine is made from the vine’s leaves
Only possible because of the low intervention, no-chemical techniques Holly and James employ at St Martin’s, this ‘folly’ wine is a unique drink made from the vine leaves rather than the grapes. An age-old practice that is rarely undertaken in vineyards now because of the more intensive growing and farming process, this wine relies on clean, fresh vine shoots and leaves. More akin to a country wine in process and flavour, it’s sweet, rich and perfect as a pair for dessert or cheese.
Amber in appearance, full of honey, white flowers and peachy flavours with a long, silky finish St Martin’s folly wine is an unexpected treat, like nothing else we’ve tried before.
Why Clare chose this story to pair with the wine:
“Some specific descriptions in Timpany’s story really connected with this wine for me, the “leaves that tremble in the light,” as well as the “pale bronze” pond the man in the story digs and wades through. There’s also something of the unexpected in ‘Flowers’, in terms of the relationship between the two main characters and what they understand of each other as the story progresses, and this wine itself surprised us, for how it is made and the depth of flavour you can get from nothing more than the leaves. Finally, making a wine like this is only possible because of the regenerative techniques Holly and James are committed to – healing the soil and the land to sustain growth for future generations. Healing and growth are such strong themes in Timpany’s story, the choice and pairing made absolute sense to us.”
News about what’s next…
We had planned to bring Read Between the Wines back to Falmouth in June but after two events back to back and with other work and projects pulling us in different directions, we’ll be putting down our glasses for the summer to recharge them.
Our eyes are now firmly set on October for our next IRL gathering (part of the Falmouth Book Festival fringe) so more on that soon.
In the meantime, keep a look out in your inbox and on social for a few word and wine recs to whet your whistles and spark your imaginations….