I’ve attached to a link to moving-to-uk-magazine here for an update on our progress moving to the U.K. Also as you can see I am just learning all about Indesign.

High up in a cave in the Sibillini mountains of Le Marche, before the church put a stop to it, the locals of Amandola, used to pop up to ask a female seer, the Sybil, (no relation to Basil) what the future held.

They also did other stuff but that’s another story (Amandola, a local town, does mean, “loving her” after all). At a local fair beneath these fabled Sibillini in Le Marche, you’ll see what look like large yellow brains sitting under laboratory glass….yes, it’s that time of year again. Table Diamonds, they call them or truffles.

But unlike diamonds whose supply and thus price is carefully controlled, these jewels are genuinely scarce and hard to find with prices to match depending on the season. If the prices leave you a little jittery you could either ask the Sibyl if you’re going to win the lottery or  you could try a 100% natural sauce available from Pasta and Truffles (www.pastaandtruffles.co.uk).  The crafty maker in Le Marche uses potatoes (who knew?) to help amalgamate the truffles into a smooth sauce without masking their fabulous flavours. There are no preservatives whatsoever.  So when it comes to opening the jar you just add a little cream to act as the flavour conveyor that truffles need and you’re ready to go. What kind of pasta?

Well you won’t go wrong with a specialist pasta, also from Pasta and Truffles,  which is cut with bronze leaving a rough, unshaven feel which is perfect for the truffle-charged sauce to cling to. Add to that, mountain water and very select durum wheat from the Abruzzi which is dried at low temperature to keep the delicate aromas and you have an ideal companion. But what to pair them with? Something sparkling perhaps. But the strong flavor of the truffle can easily overpower an average prosecco.  With the money you saved on the truffles, time to fork out and get that bottle of champagne or perhaps not. If you nose around really hard in the foothills of the Sibillini, amongst the many truffle fields zealously guarded with chain-link against the ravages of wild boar and sneaky neighbours, you might just stumble across a cantina producing an award winning metodo classico that has the grunt to handle those musky earthy flavours.

Tucked away in the Val D’Aso is a family run winery that, when I visited it eight years ago, was producing unremarkable wines. One oenologist and a lot of patience and investment later, things have changed. If you ask nicely but with a slightly crazed look in your eye (not difficult for lovers of bubbly),  you will be shown into the holy of temperature controlled holies where you’ll find hundreds of bottles with crowns huddled together in the dark, roommates together for over two years where their complex bready flavours have been getting it on in the bottle. The yeast cells add character and depth to a wine made from a local variety, Passerina and the famous Sangiovese in bianco. The results are a white metodo classico that scored up in the 90’s in a blind tasting in Tuscany and one very proud wine-maker, Gabriele Vitali (www.casalevitali.com). He explains how the contact with the dead yeast cells in the bottle yields a wine that is more stable and complex than any prosecco.

Award winning bubbly maker Gabriele Vitali

He’s even experimenting with leaving the Sangiovese juice on the skins a little to produce a pink  sparkling metodo classico that holds its own against Champagne and whose hints of red fruit and acidity give you a sparkling wine that cuts through the creamy base of the sauce with a complexity to match the truffle’s.  I predict you will not be disappointed.

The French are coming. Again.  It has just been announced that plans are afoot by the French  to buy up land in the U.K. .  Taittinger and other big boys and girls have been producing sparkling white wine for some years in the U.K. after seeing Cornish pioneer Camel Valley vineyards successfully riding the early wine wave.  But now with climate change helping grapes to ripen more the French are planning on making red wine. And of course Brits like  Trevibban Mill near Padstow are already at it too. Pinot Noir is by now the second most planted red variety in the UK.  There is a storm coming.  Who is going to help small start-up wine-makers compete with the big players? The answer is Bluefruit , not a new grape variety but they are to be found in Cornwall.  Let’s back up.

Making high quality wine is a very personal matter. The French pioneered the garagiste movement (small quantities of wine of a very unique and sometimes high quality) but Californians took it to another level.  Doing it in larger volumes becomes tricky though.  You can employ people but the quality suffers; after all, nobody loves their baby as much as the parents. The winemaker can track  a handful of wine vats but if they want to keep quality but increase volume they have a problem.  Who is going to wake up at 4am during fermentation with a feeling in their gut that all is not well with the babies?
 Just how does the garagiste wine-maker keep track of 25 vats of fermenting grape-juice day and night? When to stir and oxygenate the must, if the fermentation starts to slow? When to adjust the temperature if it starts to rise?  And after fermentation, how to identify  reduction where the vat starts to smell of sulfur?

If they don’t catch the problem,  a year’s work is lost. Where on earth is the crazy winemaker going to find someone as nuts as they are? Well Cornwall based Bluefruit ’s band of beach boy beards  and boffins are coming at the problem sideways (Oh yes, we said it!) .

Indie film hit about wine. “Sideways” 2004. (cf. Beards)

“We are slightly nuts but in a good way” is how Bluefruit software engineer and champion bearded surf kayaker, Denzil puts it. “We have a track record in aerospace, medical and industrial fields. Wine is a good fit”.  They are developing custom built embedded software to manage  gas sensors (Co2, o2, H2SO4), automated flow valves, cooling units and pumps, giving continuous real-time data readouts.  In the past the wine-maker was pretty much chained to their vats night and day. Now they can monitor the vats remotely and intervene manually or automatically. This means they can increase production without having to hire extra help and without compromising their personal garage style wines. As founder and award winning entrepreneur Paul Massey  explains, “Our Agile approach with small teams and continuous feedback during development suits the garagiste spirit”. In fact there was an unexpected benefit of  Bluefruit’s embedded software: “all the data for the previous year gets  logged meaning our clients can play with  the inputs and  actually improve  their next vintage.” Climate willing, of course.  So as the big swells of garage wine-making form up, Bluefruit Software developers and their wave-riding beards will be helping new wave Brit wine-makers seriously get into those barrels.

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