It is true, that not so many years ago I raved about something much flasher: Ravida. The thing was, back then it was not so flash. Many years after I started buying it as a seventeen year old going to school in Oxford it still cost £12.99 for a 750ml bottle. That is not so bad for a keen lunatic to use for lubricating most delights without squandering all the Severe Disablement Allowance. It was very good, not the nec ultra plus but good and priced accordingly.

Sadly, news of unbeatable products at good prices spreads like a melanoma to all those who want to price me out of having a tits time of it. Last time I dared go near the burning intensity of the price label on a 500ml bottle of Ravida it was £31.95. Still good oil, for sure, but at that price it is shocking value. The Elitistreview oil purchases were sourced from ever more disparate suppliers, our net cast ever more widely in hope, until about a year ago.

The Editor, as so often these days, gets the credit for this as it was he who suggested we buy some Sainbury’s Taste The Difference Sicilian olive oil (Val di Mazara DOP) as we desperately needed some olive oil right now and this is seriously the best we can possibly afford, Davy! We bought it, we tasted it again, we tasted it on a selection of artfully chosen breads and, good god, it was lovely!

Now I will be honest and say Sainsbury’s TTD Sicilian olive oil is not, when subjected to fiercely analytical tasting scrutiny, quite as good as Ravida. But you would have to pay more frighteningly close attention than I’m capable of, to notice any qualitative difference when scoffing something as glorious as Isle of Wight tomatoes with oil, salt and pepper. I would happily drink the oil left on the plate, indeed I frequently do, with not a scintilla less pleasure than if it had been my long gone favourite Ravida.

So, today Elitistreview is not peddling the pointy pinnacle, or even selling the slopes right before it, but rather the flatter bit just before that where the bagpipe player groans and children pose for photographs. However, at £5.99 for 500 ml the view is god-damned picturesque and it’s not as if you escape the bagpipe music even if you pay someone a fortune to carry you the few metres more to the summit.

Get out to your local Sainsbury’s and buy Taste The Difference Sicilian Val di Mazara DOP olive oil, you’ll bloody love us for it! In an act of sheer stupidity we have not arranged any commission from Sainsbury’s for this blog post – even though it’s possibly the most commercial, electric hot tip I’ve ever written…

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The Editor had cooked kofte and a tomato, herb and feta salad from the excellent cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi ( homepage here ) and Sami Tamimi. The two recipes The Editor cooked in that meal alone make the Jerusalem cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi worthy of purchase (click that link to do so, or if you prefer click here to purchase the Kindle version of the Jerusalem cookbook ), but then he went on and made other recipes that were just as good! It’s obviously brilliant to have found a reliable and cookbook that scales heights. It’s even more obvious how deeply irksome it is that The Editor is now quite clearly a far better cook than me. Bugger!

Here are the kofte (spiced lamb and beef meatballs quickly fried) in all their glory, simply sprinkled with a little fresh coriander. They were certainly the snake’s snatch.

The other dish I got a good picture of which also happened to blow my minging massive mind was some mejedra (lentils cooked with rice and spices fulsomely flecked with crisp fried onion). Felicifically flavoursome and fab fart fuel.

To summarise the book I’d have to start by saying it’s packed with recipes that would make any lover of fine food drool attractively in anticipation of getting them out of the book and onto the plate. Packed, I say, packed! Narrowing down all our favourites to ten dishes for The Editor to cook to test the mettle of the book lasted from 01:30 to 06:00 on market day morning. There were only brief breaks for me to scream and weep because of ludicrous back pain during that four and a half hours. Cooking these recipes has certainly shown the book to be corkingly reliable.

The recipes themselves are simply and tersely explained, with a dash of good humour. Ingredients, their possible sources and adequate replacements are made abundantly clear. Finally the associated exposition is engaging and writing with pronounced skill and style.

I admit the Elitistreview editorial team has been a bit slow in testing this book after its purchase a period of time ago, so it’s possible you’ve heard of the beezer book and plumped to purchase it. Should you has been as vacant as us, click one of those links above now and start planning an extension with patio garden for your stomach – it’s the best recipe book we’ve read and used in a different period of time .

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I start with fruit, and I designate tomatoes as such partly to be correct but also because I’m buggered if I’m going to say anything positive about vegetables. Tomatoes from the Isle of Wight are easily the most attractive and generally scrumptious things to have hailed from that isle. They are easily available at Hampshire Farmers’ Markets which they attend as The Tomato Stall and branches of the Southern Co-Op for those of you with the good fortune to live in the south of England. If you are beyond the reaches of civilisation perhaps you can contact them via Twitter to find a local supplier. You want to find a supplier!

Why? Because Isle of Wight tomatoes have a near perfect balance between sweetness and acidity. Of course, for me balanced acidity means approaching one hell of a lot of it, but when that is combined with vigorous fruit, as in a good German Riesling or in these tomatoes, the joy of that harmony commands you to indulge ever more no matter how much your stomach screams. To be honest, I think the ‘stomach screaming’-thing is just limited to me and others who take esomeprazole, even moderate acidity hurts. These are not ultimately acidic compared to most English tomatoes if one started getting out pH meters. The vitality and energy these tomatoes exude is a match for that of the JJ Prum 2007 Spatlese I had yesterday, they pulse with joyous life making eating them an act of rejuvenation. I feel the thrill of life when I eat these little marvels.

The orb of choice is the baby plum tomato, this has the most sweet and succulent flavour. Ideally you’d just cut them in half and sprinkle some sea salt granules on the revealed livid flesh; that’ll make your pupils dilate with pleasure, if you can be arsed to share the toms with your pupils, that is. For this spell-binding dinner The Editor and I had cocktail vine tomatoes, split, salted, splashed with serious olive oil and seasoned with a small snipping of coriander. Beware coriander! You only need a little sprinkling otherwise it can alter the flavour of your wine and even dull the taste of your toms.

The next part of this meal of magnificence was beef. Beef! Beef! Wondrous beef! Mr Greg the plastic surgeon was sniffy about the merits of beef when he visited recently – a taste of what we noshed on would have corked his cake-hole.

Long time readers may not be surprised to learn the Hampshire beef that so inflamed our urges came from Woodlands Jersey Beef, I’ve sung their praises on innumerable occasions before and once again they delivered in fresh, genotyped, ready-to-implant human organ-grade style. However, before we get to the important business of pleasuring ourselves, there is the prime business; slagging off people who don’t enjoy good things.

I admit we were not first at the Woodlands Jersey Beef stand at our market; we didn’t have the widest choice of steaks. However, the sirloin and ribeyes we purchased were so small we didn’t see them for a moment as a gnat had landed on the stall table. This is not the fault of Jersey steers for being deliciously petite beasts. Nor is it, directly, the butchers fault. Blame for the miniscule steak crime can be solely laid at the feet of the tightwad consumer who is disinterested in sampling food at its best. The bastards!

There are several qualities one needs in steak in order for it to be supremely pleasure-peddling – thickness is undoubtedly one of them. If you are not seeking, demanding and buying steak of the thickness of a pound coin’s diameter you may as well go and eat some form of pre-formed, pre-seasoned, pre-chewed meat grill. Thin steak is not only inordinately irksome to prepare correctly but also delivers only a fraction of the potential pleasure of a properly girthy piece of meat. People who choose thin steak because they think it spares them expense simply spare themselves so much delight they are down on the deal value-wise. Don’t buy thin steak and if you see it on offer then spurn it favour of a satisfyingly proportioned hunk of flesh.

So The Editor and my sirloin and ribeye steaks were woefully small. Fortunately, the extremely excellent Editor is a grilling genius and managed, with his big, frighteningly hot implement, to extract the very most from our miserably measured meat morsels. The sirloin had a tender consistency and a healthy taste of complex, grassy, seductive meat. Truly excellent. The ribeyes showed why Woodlands Jersey price them as their most treasured articles. It possessed a fabulous texture where the meat melted onto our palates delivering richly fat-infused glories of supremely complex beefy flavours that ranged the expressive spectrum from intricate and involving to profound and manly. This was not a choice example, but when we’ve had properly dimensioned Woodlands ribeyes they thrash Ginger Pig steak and could hold their heaviest ends up even in the company of Pedro’s ox chops from Casa Nicolas in Tolosa. Quite possibly the best beef there is.

Finally, we needed wine with these Hampshire-sent delights and we thought we may as well have the best wine from a top Burgundy village: Freddie Mugnier’s Nuits-Saint-Georges Premier Cru Clos de la Marechale 2009-flavour. I say ‘best’ whilst recognising the existence of things such as Cathiard Nuits Premier Cru, but then go on to discount them as even they wouldn’t be worth my last kidney in the sense that my allocation of Freddie M’s wine could well be. Mugnier’s interpretation of that Nuits vineyard, and its application to broader Nuits terroir, is at the stylistic and, god damn it, quality pinnacle of the village’s wines.

2009 is clearly a great vintage and those who rushed to damn them early on for their richness and ‘excessive fruit’ will be kicking themselves in the rude bits that they didn’t buy more when examples like this confidently structured Nuits are fully mature. It’s certainly very fruity, but that is allied to power in structure, acidity and overall presence. At this stage in its development it is a stunningly stentorian seraph that commands you be in awe of its profound personality or it’ll open a can of whoop-ass on your sorry hide. Yeah, right now you take notice or else.

Pleasingly all its elements are in impressive harmony and where there’s ripe fruit there is energetic acidity, where there are confident tannins there is an ultimately supple structure. The dreary amongst you may comment that I’m advocating something I normally seem to decry, but I feel my position is always to drink wines when they are maximally pleasure-giving. With most wines that is when they are relatively young, Clos de la Marechale 2009 needs time in a good cellar. It will age to the epitome of a beautiful, poised but deep and involving Nuits-Saint-George – the future is engorged with excitement for this wine and I will be keeping the few bottles I can afford to cellar for ten years or more (if I can keep my eager, lustful hands away from such sophisticated satisfaction for so straining a separation). I’ve got to sell some bottles though, as I’m broke. Sob! That hurts.

And so with fruit, meat and wine elucidated we can crumple the napkin of this meal and toss it to the floor for the servants to tidy. We’ve enjoyed the good stuff, nothing more to see here, but you’d be welcome to join The Editor and I for an experiential puff on the e-cigarette we have, probably foolishly, obtained for meditative moments like this when we really wish there was just a smidgen of that Nuits left. And maybe half a tomato as well…

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Perhaps, my faithful readers, you will be unsurprised to learn I chose to partner the pork with Pinot. The Pinot I picked was a 2002 Premier Cru Volnay from de Montille. I admit I’ve sometimes got moody and in a bit of a huff about their wines, they’ve failed to deliver on occasion. However, their 2002s have never been less than stunning. This Volnay continued that run in a style that had me twirling around with pleasure in the chair supposed to ease my back (rather than be an instrument of mirth). Winning wine, spiffing spinning seat.

Considering the quality of everything preceding it, I didn’t feel remotely vexed to be drinking one third of my remaining Winchester stash of JJ Prum with the cheese. Their wines are truly the whelk’s willy in quality and you don’t have to drink them as old as some people suggest. This 2007 was showing in glorious form and only vaguely reminded us that sulphur is varietal character for Germany Riesling. On to the tasting notes!

Volnay Premier Cru Champans 2002, de Montille

Elegance and energy, that’s what I smell here. There are hints of soft maturity to the fruit, but the main expression of things fruity is all about bright freshness and truly exquisite beauty. The alcohol level is very low, I quite believe the label’s claimed 12%, and lets the pure refinement of the fruit and subtle earthiness speak for themselves. Whilst the beauty of this nose inflames passions you know you can’t do anything sordid with it as you’d smash it to fragments – it’s all about poise and finesse.

The palate is a sculpted little number too. There is no alcohol heat or neither does it pummel with planks to distract from its intricate interplay between fresh fruit, focussed earthiness and lively acidity. It is all in tear-jerkingly great harmony, particularly for one who is feeling a tad emotional after extreme pain has been addling my mind for months.

If you like your wines small scale, refreshing, and engaging in an innocently pure way, and I when I’m taking the correct pills I do, then this wine will totally satisfy your non-lewd sensibilities. Drink yours now, do it, it is mind-cuddlingly good right now. If you age it more you’ll miss out on the extreme pleasure of this stage of development with no promise it’ll caress your buttocks any more tenderly.

Riesling Auslese Wehlener Sonnenuhr 2007, JJ Prum

Right, I’m not going to poo about with this note, you know the basic German Riesling drill: elegant, light-bodied, refined, pure, painful acidity, oh my stomach hurts, ooowww the agony and so on and so forth. We shall deal with what makes this wine special!

It’s certainly true the acidity is an aspect of that; it’s so mother-frightening in its power that it makes a wine of even this distinct sweetness seem rather dry.

This is compounded by its penetratingly profound and immensely intense minerality, which dries the wine out even more than the acidity. It’s as complex as the combined sum of all my medical problems. Too sophisticated for all but the most gifted of doctors oenophiles.

Then the fruit is deliciously drinkable; you cannot help but be smitten by such winsome scrumptiousness. It, too, is really complex with more varieties of limes and lemons than you’ll find in a Chelsea health food shop’s marmalade. It is dizzying but decidedly delightful.

The thing that really does it for me, though, is the screamingly insane harmony of the bleeder. With that much sugar, all the ripe fruit, the epic quantities of intricate minerality and acid of kinky perversion levels it shouldn’t work. It ought to be one of those people who sit at the back in London buses screaming incoherent abuse whilst playing music through their mobile phone’s speakers. But it’s not – it’s brilliantly balanced. All the components understand each other so well that the complete article is one of wonderfully drinkable, minimalist elegance. I’ve no idea how ‘Shouting’ Manfred Prum and his lovely daughter Katarina consistently manage to produce wines of such brilliance, but I will be replenishing my Winchester stock with utmost urgency.

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When he revealed he was bringing CSHVT89 (which is, after trying it about 30 times during my life, what I have come to know it as) I was rather pleased that I had decided to open my favourite Chablis ever. I thought they would make a comparative pair that reached the heady heights of interesting and thought-provoking as both are supremely fine wines that play with ideas of both exquisite elegance and structured scale. I admit in most other terms the wines were not so similar, but to have two examples of wines that simultaneously inhabit both ends of the weight-spectrum for wine made for an intriguing exercise in wine tasting.

Riesling Clos St Hune Vendanges Tardives 1989, F. E. Trimbach

Even though we know Mr Greg’s cellar is excellent, it is terribly easy to worry about what condition a 24 year old wine is going to be in. The Editor’s worries got the better of him and he announced that it was a bit flat and dried out. A staggering amount of prior experience of such wines made me feel safe in saying, “Just wait”.

Fortunately for my reputation it took a mere few minutes for the nose to blossom into a supremely complex panoply of candied fruit and stylish mineral aromas. It had real force of presence and yet carried its 14% alcohol extremely lightly, giving an overall impression of a totally beautiful (and reasonably mature) set of scents. The palate was big and ripe, there’s no denying that, but with fine, thrilling minerality and a searing slash of acidity running through it light, exciting liveliness seemed the overall impression of the palate.

The harmony between those disparate elements was a joy to experience and I had a freaking tits time drinking (far) more than my fair share. Yes, the flavours were pretty mature, and the wine may well have been a touch more energetic five years ago. However, if you like fully mature Riesling, particularly of the rather howlingly insane idiom of CSHVT89, and you’ve got a comparatively well-hung cellar there’s no rush with this wine.

At the end of the meal when I came back to this bottle and poured myself all that was left it was still in a spiffing salamander state. Just remember, when you are opening older Trimbach wines, from the time before they all got poxed by premox, they need a bit of time to breathe.

Chablis Premier Cru Fourchaume ‘Vignoble de Vaulorent’ 2007, Fevre

When I first tried this wine in 2010 I described it as ‘defining a new reference for Chablis‘. Recent vintages have been engorged with class, and some differently enlightened people have questioned my views on this one, but I still think my first review was spot on and this remains the greatest Chablis I have ever tasted.

Of course, it is a lot younger than the CSHVT89, made from a different grape variety, in a different region, so the flavour profiles will be wildly dissimilar. However, as you taste, there is a similar discussion going on between your brain and olfactory apparatus about the delicacy/density details on display.

The Clos St Hune managed density because it was a very ripe, late harvest wine fermented to dryness, its lightness came from the vineyard and variety. With this Vaulorent the density is partly because the tiny plot of vines that produce it are adjacent a Grand Cru. Grand Cru Chablis is remarkably dense stuff. Coming from a ripe vintage and made from a variety that easily does scale are additional factors. Its lightness and refinement also come from the vineyard location; it may have next-door Grand Cru influences but also the sharp, racy, direct aspects of the Fourchaume Premier Cru abound. It very obviously throbs with Grand Cru power whilst being a elegant and vivacious Premier Cru.

That doesn’t make it schizophrenic! That’s not what schizophrenia is, as well I know, rather it is touched by Dissociative Identity Disorder (as split personalities are correctly described). Yeah, a DIDy wine.

Not much has changed in the last few years since I first tasted it, so I think my note (linked to above) is still accurate. I think, perhaps, the palate is a tiny bit fuller and there’s a the merest suggestion of more buttery richness on the nose. But I could be wrong. In that first note I wasn’t entertaining someone for lunch and I had my critical faculties set to ‘hyper-analytical’, so do have a read of that.

I’ve got a couple more wines to report on from what was a spiffing lunch experience. They will have to wait until the next time my back pain is in the realms of tolerability, which it left about 10 minutes ago. Anon!

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