A day in the life… product sourcing

Alastair Marshall, Adnams’ Senior Wine Buyer, gets sent a great deal of wine to taste from producers all over the world. However, it’s not just wine that arrives here in the Maltstore. Like many agriculturally-based businesses, winegrowers often have a diverse range of interests other than growing grapes. Many own small farms supporting agri-tourism businesses or produce other food stuffs such as olive oil, vinegars, sunflowers and garlic. It makes environmental sense that, if we are shipping their wine, to see if they have any other interesting and tasty products that we can add to the lorry as well. Every summer, Marc Ryckwaert, a producer of Côtes-du-Rhône, sends us gorgeous, fat bulbs of his pink garlic along with his wine – we sold a couple of boxes in our store here in Southwold. We are passionate about local sourcing, but we’re also passionate about foods you just can’t get locally, and this garlic is a rare annual treat.

Last week, Alastair was sent a box of organic fruit pastes from Australia – I had spotted an intriguing-looking package on his desk, and being the curious type, couldn’t resist having a closer look. These pastes are made from red grape marc (from the residual skins and pips from winemaking) combined with other ingredients to make a fruit paste – quince paste is the jelly most frequently found on your cheese platter. The makers, ‘Australian Harvest’, are keen to stress that these pastes have a high ORAC rating, (Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity), which means it’s high in anti-oxidants, and therefore good for you.

Alastair and Rob Chase had taken the box to one of their Friday lunches at The Crown and had tasted all six pots with a selection of cheese. Fielding all my questions, he volunteered the box to me to try – excellent, another tasting opportunity. So, without delay, I walked to Nutters of Southwold, our local cheese shop, and asked Louise (Southwold’s cheese aficionado) which cheeses she’d recommend to accompany grape-paste. I bought three different cheeses: Blue Stilton, Capricorn Brie and the splendidly named Mrs Temple’s Alpine Cheese from Norfolk. Who could resist a cheese with a name like that? It’s made using milk from Brown Swiss cows just outside Wells-next-the-Sea.

Nutters of Southwold, purveyors of wide smiles and great cheeses

Here’s the result of the taste-off

Quince & Grape paste
Soft, jam-like texture with smoky, woody, tobacco aromas. Very nice with the Blue Stilton – it softens the palate and takes away some of the cheese’s acidity. Doesn’t work so well with the very smooth, delicious and creamy Capricorn Brie (which was attempting to escape off the plate).

Cabernet Pepperberry paste
This was my favourite paste, made from Cabernet Sauvignon marc and the native Australian pepperberries. The paste smells like a good, old vintage of Cabernet with aromas of cassis and old oak. The texture is very different to the previous pot – this one is like clear jelly. It works fantastically with the Brie and is good with the Alpine cheese.

Fig and Grape paste
Aromas of molasses with a hint of tobacco and a strong fig taste with crunchy fig seeds. Really nice with the Stilton, they complement each other well. It’s nice with the Norfolk Alpine cheese, too, as it takes some of the strength away to create balance.

Blueberry and Grape paste
This is very sweet, so it overwhelmed the Brie a bit, but was good with the Stilton and Alpine cheese.

Chilli Shiraz paste
Gentle Golden Virginia tobacco aromas with hints of vanilla. It has a weirdly delicious, zingy flavour with a slight warmth – like a fiery cinnamon gobstopper, but much gentler! It was very hot with the Stilton, but doesn’t seem as hot with the creamy Brie.

So, will we be buying them? Probably not, but they are a fascinating aside, and has made me think I should buy fruit pastes with cheese in the future.