Cambridgeshire

A couple of weekends ago The Husband and I travelled to Cambridgeshire for the day. It was lovely. Not that far out of London (around 1 1/4 hours to the centre of Cambridge) it was beautifully quiet countryside.

There were two aspects to the day: firstly, a trip to a vineyard (Christmas present from Sister-In-Law-The-Elder); and secondly, a trip to visit the Vicar and family who have relocated to Cambridge for three years 'to pursue matters more cerebral' (as a thank you motion to the departing DoF at a former client once put it).

The vineyard trip was most enjoyable (although I would not recommend The Activity Superstore
through whom it was arranged .... it took about three attempts to get through to book, with messages not returned at all when I was informed they would be ... then we couldn't book very far in advance..... then the start time given for the day was half an hour earlier than it needed to have been ... all in all - quite disorganised).

Anyhow, we visited Chilford Hall.
After a brief history of Chilford Hall itself (apparently the man behind the Little Chef chain was behind its development as a conference centre), we had a very pleasant tour (total group about 20-30) followed by a tasting session and nice lunch. Normally my taste extends only to Pinot Grigio, but we found a couple of other wines which were quite pleasant. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that my palate can detect some differences between wine (although quite slight differences, and I still marvel to think that a whole industry has grown up around the ability to describe a wine as 'clean and toasty finish, hints of melon, lychee and grapefruit on the nose'.....). We particularly liked 'Chilford Medium 2006' made from Mueller Thurgau and Reichensteiner grapes - an 'award winning medium [is] made distinctive by its rich medley of fruit and floral aromas'.
Things we learned:

• tilting the wine at a 45 degree angle: as white wine ages the colour moves from clear to greeny to yellow to deep yellow (for red wine, the progress is watery, purple, darker purple, brown).
  
• your tongue tastes as follows: tip - sweetness, back - bitter, sides - acidity
• swirling the wine round the glass and watching the 'legs' gives an indication of alcohol content - the slower the descent, the higher the alcohol content.
• taste buds - there are 10k on the tongue, but 10m in the olfactory bulb behind the nose...