‘Try’ of the Week: Cheshire Wine School

This weekend I was lucky to be invited along to the Cheshire Wine School’s Saturday class*. Located in the very luxurious surroundings of Gaucho, Manchester Cheshire Wine School run a class introducing all to the delights of wine in a relaxed and friendly environment.

Jake was our host and certainly knows a thing or two having worked for Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in London and Gaucho as head sommelier before deciding education of wine was more his thing. And I, for one, am glad he has taken this direction. He is so friendly and makes everyone feel completely at ease. There are no silly questions here, ask whatever you want and a friendly response is what you will get. Perfect for the wine novice.

The session starts with considering the senses. Glasses are passed around containing different food items to encourage you to really ‘smell’ before a little quiz and a blind smell test of different liquors. I’ve done wine tasting before as you will know if you have read my old blog posts but let me tell you, I was poor at this! The girl who knew nothing about wine got 4 out of 5 right. What a nose she had!

Moving onto the wine itself we looked at sparkling, white and red wines considering how they are all made and where they come from. We tried a fabulous cava by Cordoniu and discussed the differences between champagne, cava and prosecco (I won’t give anything away but it isn’t as much of a difference between the first two as you would think) before moving on to the white wines for the day. We tried two chardonnays… one new world and one old world. This is a fresh take on teaching wine for me and I loved seeing the differences in the wines even down to the colour. One was light, dry and very fresh. The other? darker, heavier and heavily scented with vanilla. I know now that I am a new world wine fan when it comes to white.

We tried two red wines but, this time, Riojas from the same vine but different years. One was 7 years older than the other and I knew straight away I wouldn’t like the older wine… too heavy and tabacco scented for me! The younger wine was quite tasty for a red… those who know me will know I am not a huge lover of red wine. This rioja was light and unoaked. Something both me and the other girl in the group now know that we prefer from a wine.

A lovely end to the day was the tasting of a dessert wine which we had with a scoop of the most delightful dulce du leche ice cream I have ever tasted. Jake encouraged us to try the wine beforehand and then after the ice cream to highlight how food changes the taste of the wine. It takes away the sweetness in this instance leaving a much more floral aspect to the wine than before. This can also be a negative as was highlighted when we all tried the first chardonnay with the ice cream. I think every one of us screwed up our faces at the taste as it turned so sour!

After the session we had a relaxed, informal chat about wines… where to buy them from (Jake had got most of the wines from Hanging Ditch so I simply HAD to pay a visit on my way home for a few personal recommendations), what type of wines we were likely to enjoy based on what we had tried on the day and how to choose a decent bottle of wine in a restaurant or supermarket.

All in all it was a great afternoon made even better by a melt in the mouth rib eye steak sandwich half way through. I’ve not shared the wines or the finer details of this afternoon…. I want you to go and try it for yourself. It would only spoil such a special experience if I told you everything about it. If you have any questions though you are more than welcome to ask either me or Jake. He is always on hand on Twitter (@cheshirewinesch) to answer your questions or just recommend a decent bottle of your favourite grape variety.

Let me know if you decide to go and what you think!

I attended this event as a guest of the wine school. This has in no way affected my review which is an honest account of my dining experience.