Echeverria Wine Dinner

11 August 2017

Our Echeverria wine dinner takes place on Wednesday 6th September. We’ll be welcoming Roberto Echeverria, whose family runs the Echeverria Winery in Chile, to take us through their huge portfolio of wines, including four new additions to our wine list. Four courses, plus canapes, will be designed by our chefs to be paired with the wines, creating the perfect opportunity to taste and enjoy their flavours.

Tickets are £45 each, including each of the Echeverria wines for tasting. Places are limited to just 16, and our last event sold out quickly, so book early to avoid disappointment. Call us on 01423 521510.

Meanwhile, to find out more about Echeverria wines, click here – or click here to read about Roberto and his family.

Roberto Echeverria

A Superb Time at the Frescobaldi Wine Dinner

28 July 2017

Our exclusive wine-tasting dinner with Giuseppe Pariani, export director of the Frescobaldi Estate in Italy, was a huge success.

We held the event to introduce enthusiasts and customers to wines from the estate, which we recently added to our wine list. This followed David’s visit to the Frescobaldi cellars earlier this year, when he was impressed with the wines he tried there.

It was great to be able to return the warm welcome David had received in Italy and invite Giuseppe to Harrogate and to William & Victoria. And he certainly seemed to like what we had to offer: When he first entered the wine bar, he said: “This place has soul!”

We welcomed 15 guests to our wine-tasting dinner. They sampled five courses as well as canapés, which were prepared by our chefs using a range of Yorkshire produce. Each course was paired with a Frescobaldi wine. Giuseppe told everyone all about the history of the estate, how the grapes are grown and how the wine is made using processes based on hundreds of years of experience.

The canapés were served with the Alie Rose, followed by a pairing of the salmon and asparagus terrine with the Vermentino Maremma.

The main course was a choice between Holme Farm Venison Wellington or A Trio of Nidderdale Lamb, paired with the Nipozzano Chianti Ru na Reserva DOCG.

Finally, the Yorkshire Cheeseboard was accompanied by the Lamaione Toscana IGT, an outstanding, robust, 100% merlot with a fully developed structure, which would work equally well with rich red meat dishes such as slow cooked rib of beef, steaks or venison. Leather and tobacco aromas lead to rich, opulent and inviting flavours of black fruit and spice, which opens up into an amazing concentration of layered unctuous bliss.

This Lamaione Toscana is a particular favourite of David’s. He was blown away by it when he tried it in on his trip to the Frescobaldi Estate earlier this year. Often the Frescobaldi wines are made with the Sangiovese grape, and merlot is used to blend. But this is an unusual and unique wine because it is 100% merlot; a deep, dark purple colour which you could pick out in a line up, with a rich and intense flavour and a long finish. A definite stand out wine!

All these wines are now on the list at William & Victoria, so why not pop in and try them for yourself?

Dinner was finished with a sparkling wine, a Frescobaldi Brut, which was exclusive to the event because it is not on our wine list (although we do have some great alternatives!).

All our guests thoroughly enjoyed the evening. One of them sent us a lovely email afterwards, saying: “I hope you can pass on our thanks to the team for such a fantastic evening where the food, wine and service were superb. Would you be able to send me the details of the wines we tasted as we thought they were amazing – especially the red merlot!”

   

If you like the sound of this event, you might like to know that we’re planning another wine-tasting dinner later this year, focusing on French wine. Our special guest will be Gerard Bertrand, a former professional rugby player for the French national team who is now an award-winning wine maker in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

To be the first to hear about this, and all our events, please sign up to our newsletter here.

Introducing Our New Style Wine List

14 July 2017

If you’ve visited us recently you’ll have noticed that we’ve made a few changes to the way our wine list is laid out, introducing wines by their character rather than simply as red, white or rosé.

The new approach will hopefully help customers identify new wines to try alongside their usual favourites by listing similar palates together. Our team is always on hand to share knowledge and provide additional information and advice. We spend a lot of time getting to know our wines and the regions that produce some of our finest bottles, which means we can be confident about their provenance and can talk about them with real authority.

For those customers who often feel bamboozled by the amount of choice and information on a wine list, this will hopefully make life easier. For those who know their wines, they will hopefully appreciate this new approach, which will offer new options alongside their tried and trusted favourites. For those who like to know the inside leg of every grape inside each bottle, we are more than happy to provide that detail – in fact we rather enjoy it.

Our passion for wine was difficult to hide when we chose our categories. We have gone a little further than simply grouping them as crisp and dry or full-bodied and fruity. Our white wines are either ‘crisp, dry, clean and refreshing’, ‘aromatic, herbaceous, with tight minerality’ or with a ‘generous style, voluptuous and expressive’.

For those looking for the perfect red to accompany their lamb Henry or fillet steak, we have plenty on offer, whether your preference is for something ‘fruity, fleshy and quaffable’, a wine with a ‘rich style, spicy and savoury’ or something ‘smooth, robust and fuller bodied’.

Each wine also has its own tailored description and we have made recommendations in each category. If you do try something new and it isn’t to your liking, we will of course be happy to change it for you.

W&V Wine List 2017 ->> Will and Vics 5.5.17