Bring a Bottle Podcast: Episode 89

Whether it be stunning wine from Côtes de Bordeaux, Duran Duran’s guilty pleasure, a very moreish summer cup or the best wine to pair with duck and hoisin sauce, Helena and special guest, Virgin Radio DJ Eddy Temple-Morris have got a little bit of everything for you in Episode 89 of the Bring a Bottle podcast! Listen in now via the player below!

Our Guest Drinker

This week the podcast baton has passed to Helena and she is joined by non-other than DJ and musical guru Eddy Temple-Morris! Eddy is a musician by trade having been in a band since the 1980s. He’s also been a regular radio presenter for the last 30 years and you can find him on Virgin Radio daily from 10am. To find out more about Eddy and his passions make sure you listen to the podcast today!

What’s in our glass?

This episode is a Côtes de Bordeaux special. Côtes de Bordeaux is a relatively new appellation and has many amazing winemakers within it.

In Episode 89 you'll find us sipping on two different wines produced in this region, the first of which is Château Puynard 2018. It is 100% Merlot. On the nose, it has a leathery, cedary note and to taste it is full of ripe plum and bright red fruits. It would pair perfectly with a beef roast dinner.

Size: 750ml
ABV: 14.5%
Find here: Naked Wines £15.99

Next up we have Château de Couronneau Volte Face 2018. This wine is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. It is a beautiful dark red colour and has savoury, earthy tones to it as well as punchy flavours of black fruits. 

Size: 750ml
ABV: 15%
Find here: vintageroots.co.uk £14.75

Buy it or Bin it

You’re not going to want to miss Eddy’s reaction when Helena surprises him with Reverend Hubert’s Summer Cup. This summer cup is packed full of rhubarb, plums, pomegranate and cranberries and is sweet and summery. The question is though, do Helena and Eddy decide to buy it or bin it?! Listen in here to find out!

Size: 500ml
ABV: 20.1%
Find here: £29.99

Instant Sommelier Quick Fire Round

Eddy also has a surprise as he puts Helena to the test in a quickfire round of questions in which she has to come up with the perfect bottle to pair with different dishes. There’s mention of haggis, duck in hoisin sauce and Thai green curry but which drinks will Helena choose, and does Eddy agree?!

Mailbag

Finally, it wouldn’t be a bring a bottle podcast without our mailbag question and this week that question is ‘Why did James Bond like his Martini shaken and not stirred?’. Listen in to hear what Helena has to say about it!

Bring a Bottle Podcast: Episode 88

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Bring a Bottle Podcast! We’re back from our Summer jollies and up to our usual mischief while helping you fall in love with what’s in your glass. From this week onwards though, we’re mixing things up by not only recording podcasts together but also recording podcasts separately with special guests and it just so happens that this week it’s Aidy’s turn!

You can listen to the full podcast via the player below or via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. Here’s a little snippet of what he got up to:

Third Drinkers

Joining Aidy in the studio are Amanda Selby and Keiligh Baker.

Amanda Selby, known as @DrinkWithMeUK, is an online drinks sensation. From wine to spirits she’s worked in just about every drinks job there is working on a huge roster of brands like Jack Daniels, Chambord, Russian Standard Vodka, Finlandia Vodka, Sonoma Cutrer Winery in California, Royal Tokaji in Hungary, we could go on.

Keiligh Baker is a journalist and podcast extraordinaire. On the writing side, she’s worked with everyone from the MailOnline to BBC and the Travel Show publishing breaking news stories. In the podcasting world, she’s been working on a number of hit BBC Shows like Ouch and is currently a producer of the BBC’s disability podcast, Access All.

What’s in Our Glass?

We’re putting Grand Marnier to the test this week. Grand Marnier is an orange liqueur made in the heart of cognac and is more commonly mixed into cocktails than drunk mixed with tonics. We’ve chosen to mix our Grand Marnier with Franklin & Sons Rosemary and Black Olive tonic water and Franklin & Sons Mallorcan tonic water.

The Mallorcan tonic water has a smell reminiscent of an orange spritz! It is lovely and fresh, not too sweet and when mixed with the Grand Marnier a natural breeze of fresh orange marmalade hits you with a refreshing burst of tonic at the end. It’s like summer in a glass!

Find here: £17.50 for 24 (200ml)

The Rosemary and Black Olive tonic water is like a meal in a bottle before you’ve even put any Grand Marnier in the mix – think focaccia! When mixed with the Grand Marnier, orange and rosemary hits your nose and to be quite honest it smells like Christmas and would make for a great aperitif before your turkey! It’s a perfect winter drink.

Find here: £17.50 for 24 (200ml)

Drinks News

Have you ever flown Emirates? Well, for all those of you lucky enough to fly first class with them (please do get in touch we have soo many questions!), you will be pleased to hear that now, not only do you get a double bed, a 3.5 minute hot shower and a huge TV screen, but Emirates has just invested £1.6 billion in unlimited Dom Perignon and Caviar for you to enjoy! Cheers to that!

Buy it or Bin it

In ‘Buy it or Bin it’ Amanda puts our tastebuds to the test with a bright blue liquid that looks like either WKD or an energy drink. We can tell you it is neither of those and we can also tell you that you’re going to love the reactions had when it’s tried! Listen in to find out what it actually is here.

Question Time with Aidy

Aidy has some burning questions for Amanda and Keiligh and the answers involve NYC’s Gangsta Crab, how to make the perfect Martini no matter how you like it best, what life is like working for BBC’s disability podcast, Access All, and finally… stealing your baby’s diffuser and putting it to “much better use” by using it to make cocktails!

Mailbag

This week’s burning question is ‘Why do people rub lemon around the glass when making a martini – is it just theatre or is there a reason?’ Well, there is a reason and although it may seem like quite a bizarre thing to do, it’s really quite an important reason. Listen in to hear Amanda explain more!

⁣Enjoyed this? Well, there’s plenty more to listen to so make sure to check out Episode 88 of The Bring a Bottle Podcast now!

The Bring a Bottle Podcast: Episode 87

We’re back with another fun-filled podcast and this week we’re joined in the studio by special guest Christian Smith. Listen in as we chat all about the perfect mixers for your tequila, a great hangover cure, 24-carat gold covered fish and chips and more!

What’s in our glass?

This week we’re focussing on great mixers for tequila and have chosen Franklin and Sons Grapefruit and Bergamot tonic water and Pink Grapefruit Soda.

Bergamot is what you associate earl grey tea with and the tonic didn’t disappoint. Subtle and floral with a nice fruity edge from the grapefruit, it made for a beautiful and very refreshing drink alone and then in combination with the tequila led to a more savoury drink with a slight peppery edge to it. Nom! 

Size: 200ml
Find here: £17.50 for 24

The Pink Grapefruit soda is a beautiful and very sophisticated soda that we would quite happily enjoy on its own as a soft drink. Today, however, is all about the tequila mixers and this soda did not disappoint. It smells just like that burst of oils you get when cutting into a grapefruit and tastes just as good with a touch of zesty lime on the finish. 

Size: 200ml
Find here: £17.50 for 24

Third Drinker

This week we are joined in the studio by Christian Smith who is the online editor for The Drinks Business. He shares with us his favourite stories, including one about 24-carat gold adorned fish and chips being sold for £80 in Glasgow, a stunning whisky and tells us more about what it is like to work as the online editor for The Drinks Business!

The Three Drinkers in Ireland Wins an Award

For those who haven’t yet heard, The Three Drinkers in Ireland won an award for ‘The Best Contribution to Wine and Spirits Tourism’ at the Drinks Business Awards this June! If you haven’t seen the series yet, all 6 episodes can be found on Prime Video!

Drinkers Discovery

Stepping away from our usual Drinkers’ Discoveries this week, we bring you ‘Phizz’. These are orange or apple and blackcurrant flavoured tablets that dissolve in water and enable you to absorb 3x the amount of water you would from just drinking a glass of it. Full of natural electrolytes, like sodium, potassium and zinc, not only are they perfect for rehydrating but they’re also great for your skin, hair and nails… and we reckon they would work a treat when you have a hangover too ;)

That’s not all though, we also have a fantastic ‘Buy it or Bin it’, Aidy brings back his ‘Wine and a Whine’, we share a dishwasher hack for your cloudy glasses and talk about vines grown in space! Listen in today!

The Bring a Bottle Podcast: Episode 83

Whether it be the best crisps to pair with your champagne, beer that tastes like chardonnay, stunning mixers for your vodka or £5 wine that tastes decent, we’ve got a little bit of everything for you in Episode 83 of the Bring a Bottle podcast! Listen in now via the player below!

What’s in our glass

We’re making our way through more of Franklin & Sons mixers this week and this time we’re mixing them with vodka. First up we tried the Rhubarb and Hibiscus Tonic with Assaranca Vodka – the result was a creamy well-balanced drink very evocative of childhood memories of rhubarb and custard sweets. The herbal nature of the vodka matched the rhubarb, which is also quite herbal in flavour, really well and the whole drink wasn’t overly sweet due to the slight bitterness from the tonic making for a delicious sip.

Size: 200ml
Find here: £17.50 for 24

The second mixer we tried was the Guava and Lime soda. The guava came through first, more on the nose than the palate, and then the lime came racing in the back making for a very refreshing drink. This mixer would also pair beautifully well with a white rum such as Equiano white.

Size: 200ml
Find here: £17.50 for 24

Assaranca Vodka

Size: 500ml
ABV: 41%
Find here: £26.99

Drinks News

This week it’s all about Champagne and what to pair it with. Some say caviar works best, many say fish and chips are the way to go but Champagne Laurent Perrier have created the perfect bag of crisps to pair with their Champagne! This bag of crisps, aptly named ‘Chip Shop Scraps and Fries’ is a playful take on fish and chips and contains scraps of batter, thin-cut fries and crunchy peas seasoned with salt and malt vinegar! You can pick a pack up from Sainsbury’s for £1.75 and if you want the champagne to match you’ll only have to fork out an extra 24x the price of your crisps ;)

Bryan Rodriquez

We are joined in the studio by the wonderful Bryan Rodriguez, wine and spirits buyer for Harvey Nichols. He tells us all about his upcoming wedding, what it’s like to be the wine and spirits buyer for Harvey Nichols and shares a few drinker’s discoveries you’re going to want to try!

Drinkers Discovery

We are treated to a Drinker’s Discovery this week as Bryan has brought a bottle of Boom Beer into the studio all the way from Belgium! This particular beer, VAT31, is a lambic style sour beer. It was brewed in 2015 before being naturally fermented in big old barrels which have been around for over 100 years before finally being bottled in 2020! The beer itself will last until 2040 and will age like fine wine. To look at, it is cloudy and orangey, it smells like beer but has a California chardonnay note to it and a lot of light woody influence from all its time in the barrel. It’s creamy to taste and not gassy at all and would work wonderfully with sushi, fish and chips and roast chicken. This would be a great way to get wine drinkers into beer although it is very hard to get your hands on in the UK. For those looking for something easier to find, Burning sky is a UK-based sour beer producer well worth looking into.

Bang for Buck

You can’t beat a bargain and Helena has found a corker! Tesco has a new range of £5 wines that are produced fairly and taste great for their price point! You can find out more here.

This next one is not a cheap bargain; however, it is still a big bargain. Harvey Nichols Napa Cabernet Sauvignon is actually made using the same grapes that are de-classified from Insignia, Joseph Phelps's world renowned 3-figure iconic wine. Considering a bottle of Insignia retails at nearly 10 times the price of this bottle, it is an absolute steal and it will age beautifully for another 10+ years.

Size: 750ml
ABV: 14.5%
Find here: £35

If you like the sound of this and want to hear more, make sure to listen in today and to read more of Bryan’s recommendations, click here!

The Bring a Bottle Podcast: Episode 82

Another week, another exciting episode of the Bring a Bottle podcast to listen in to! This week we’re joined by special third drinker guest, Romy Gill, as we talk about her gorgeous gin and brand new book, a new breed of spirit from Holyrood Distillery and Aidy’s BBC Radio 4 documentary 'The Truth About Tourette's'. Listen in via the player below today!

What’s in our glass?

This week we’re looking at some great mixers for gin and we’ve picked up Franklin & Sons Elderflower and Cucumber tonic. Elderflower and cucumber are really complementary flavours for many types of gin and we found this to be the case here too. The cucumber was the stand-out flavour at first with a subtle hint of elderflower that came out more in the glass as time went on making for a very refreshing and floral G&T.

Size: 200ml
Find here: £17.50 (for 24 bottles)

Drinks News

Helena has spotted an interesting event taking place this Summer, Wetherspoons 11hr bus pub crawl! The boozy experience is £22, includes breakfast, lunch and booze and will take you to 7 venues between Southport and Blackpool all with the aim of uniting solo drinkers and giving them a chance to make friends. Listen in to find out more!

Personal News

Aidy has some big news this week as he has launched a documentary on BBC Radio 4 called ‘The Truth about Tourette’s’. Aidy himself has Tourette’s Syndrome and he is very eager to share the true facts and figures about the condition and to let people know that Tourette’s can be a superpower and not a burden. Listen in as he interviews people with the condition as well as his friends and family to give you a truthful insight into what living with Tourette’s is like.

Third Drinker

This week we are joined in the studio by the fantastic Romy Gill MBE. Romy is a chef, author and broadcaster whose specialty is Indian cuisine with a British twist. Listen in to hear us chat all about her latest book, her Mango, Ginger and Lime gin and her guilty food and drink pleasure!

Drinker’s Discovery

We taste test a new breed of spirit from Holyrood Distillery, enter ‘Strong Water’. Essentially new make, it is made with certain types of heritage barley. We tried ‘Charmed Circle’ made from Golden Promise barley, it has notes of orchid fruits and a bitter sweet finish of dark chocolate and liquorice. We reckon it would work a treat with Franklin and Sons Rosemary and Olive mixer!

If you’ve enjoyed this summary, make sure you tune in to hear more about our ‘word of the week’, the cheeky antics of two rival beer distilleries and more…

The Bring a Bottle Podcast: Episode 81

Welcome back to another episode of our Bring a Bottle podcast! This week we chat whisky mixers, weird and wonderful tasting notes, pornstar martini spas and innovative water that tastes like more! Listen in via this player to hear all this and more!

What’s In Our Glass?

We love a dram of whisky but sometimes you just want to mix it up. So, that’s exactly what we’ve done this week using Franklin and Sons mixers and sodas. First up was their Mandarin with Ginger soda (for our US readers, soda in the UK is spring water with flavour) and it worked so well. The mandarin jumped out the glass, it was floral, fruity and then had caramel chiming in from the whisky. A perfect drink for a whisky lover that wants something a bit different or for someone wanting to get into whisky itself.

Next up we went down a more traditional route of ginger ale. Listen in to find out what we thought and the difference mixing drinks with ginger ale makes vrs ginger beer!

Drinks News

We have two crackers this week, Aidy brings some of the weirdest whisky tasting notes made by professionals to the table… toilet duck whisky anyone?! Whilst Helena lets us know about the first-ever pornstar martini spa, (that you can acutally bathe in)!

Drinks Doing Good

We love a drinks brand that does good and Aidy has found one that does just that. Introducing Sea Change wines which are an eco-friendly brand that help fund ocean conservation projects across the globe through the sale of every one of their bottles. Aidy tried their Negroamaro wine, which is produced on the southern edge of Italy and is almost like a blend of malbec and merlot in taste. It’s a big, bold wine with notes of cassis, blackcurrant, cherry, a kick of tobacco and dark chocolate and the great news is it’s only a tenner!

Size: 750ml
ABV: 12%
Find here: £10.49

Drinkers Discovery

Let’s talk water. We’re supposed to drink 6-8 cups a day but is it just us or does anyone else find this difficult?! Well, worry no more as Helena has found an innovative brand that has changed the way you will drink water forever, Air Up. Using aroma pods that sit at the top of your bottle, your mind is tricked into thinking that you are drinking flavoured water when in fact you are just drinking water. From apple to kola to iced coffee, there is an aroma to suit all

You can pick up a bottle and aroma pods set here from £30.
Extra Aroma pods are sold in sets of 3 from £6 

Third Drinker Tasha Iny

Third Drink Tasha Iny joins Aidy for a chat all about what’s Mijenta tequilas stunning bottles, where to find the best pisco sour around and female empowerment in the tequila industry. Tasha also shares one of her favourite cocktails to mix up with Mijenta Tequila Blanco which actually happens to be the predecessor of the margarita; The Toreador.

Ingredients
50ml blanco
25ml apricot brandy
25ml lime juice
5mls small squeeze agave
Method
Shake it up, pour it into a glass and enjoy!

Mailbag

It wouldn’t be a Bring a Bottle podcast without one of your fantastic Mailbag questions, this week you asked us all about white Malbec and whether it is actually a thing. Listen in to find out what we had to say…

To listen to all this and more, along with previous podcasts, click on this link!