Sausages and an ex-Pinot

Today I am going to give you a peerless tip for getting some quality sausage action, from Swaledale Butchers. I will also give an (understandably) brief review of Kumeu River Hunting Hill Pinot Noir 2020. This is Pinot Noir that has been grown in one of the world’s best Chardonnay vineyards.

Swaledale butchers deliver the best English-style sausages you will be able to nosh on. The are unquestionably delicious. When you are eating sausage, you want only prime meat. Generally, Swaledale sausages are made from a mixture of Tamworth and Middle White shoulder and belly meat, so they have a high meat to fat ratio. They are also not pumped with water.

Then when you get the sausage in your mouth… Oh the texture! They are not a homogenised pap of ultra-pulped meat and fat but have discrete pieces of meat filling their natural sausage skins. You can see in the picture of the uncooked Cumberland ring The Editor and I ate last night that the meat filling in it is morcellated but not homogenised.

This gives them an excellent mouthfeel when they are cooked. You can feel and taste that you are swallowing sausage made of prime meat pieces rather than just any old inferior pork ground to oblivion. You can see the meat in pieces in this cooked piece of the Cumberland ring (left).

What delicious sausages these are! Primarily themed on serious meat but enhanced by wonderful herbs and spices.

The Toulouse sausage was a particular success. The meat flavour was as high-quality as the Cumberland ring, but it was charged with the sweet warmth of plenty of garlic. Most delicious.

The Editor and I both felt the Calabrian sausage lacked a touch of chilli heat, but there was just enough to put a bit of excitement with that enthusiastic sausage-swallowing. This was the only (very slight) failure of the sausages we tried.

We also tried the Cotechino sausage. This is a big sausage; a single one of these beauties weighs 350g, so you can easily pleasure two people with one when appropriately prepared.

These sausages are in a style of those from Modena in Italy. They are stuffed with pork cheek and so require a long and gentle simmering to break down the gelatine into delicious, edible compounds.

When they have been simmered, the sausage feels beautiful in your mouth. One does not normally dine on these sausages alone; they are traditionally sliced up and cooked with lentils for a great Christmas plateful of farts and delicious rendered sinew.

The Editor and I highly recommend Swaledale Butchers for all your sausage urges; they are guaranteed to satisfy!

Now for a quick review of the wine The Editor and I drank with the Cumberland ring. Why quick? I will explain at the end of the note.

Hunting Hill Pinot Noir 2020, Kumeu River

There are a few really good things about this Pinot Noir.

The first is that it has the delicious combination of sweet fruit and savoury aromas and flavours one finds in quality Burgundy. This is highly laudable and it alone shows the Pinot has been grown and transfigured into wine with superlative skill and care.

The second is that it has a marked terroir character from a really serious vineyard. It is not ‘like’ a Burgundy village or vineyard, it is grown on the other bloody side of the world, of course it is not! It does, however, have an earthiness and creamy minerality that, whilst not matching the flavour profile of a specific Burgundy site, it is of the Burgundian aspect.

Finally, two combined characteristics, the texture and the balance of the wine. It is incredibly silken and integrated, with no harsh added acidity, high alcohol or over-ripe fruit. It is totally at ease with itself.

I would go as far as saying this wine is quite great enough to make it only the second Pinot Noir outside Burgundy (the first being the stunning wines of Nick Farr of Geelong, Australia) I am interested in drinking.

So why such a cursory note? Well, the Pinot Noir vines in the Hunting Hill vineyard were infected with leafroll virus. Kumeu could not risk this being transmitted to the Chardonnay vines in one of the absolute finest Chardonnay vineyards in the world. Therefore, after the 2022 vintage, they pulled up all the Pinot Noir vines and stopped making it. There is bugger all left in the entire world!

If you see some, snap it up, it is quite the bargain! Alas, there will not be much for you to buy…