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!