Food & Wine

The Vintage Magazine is delighted to introduce a new business member, Caroline Nickerson’s company, ‘Cherry Picked Coffee’ which specialises in producing the finest Arabica coffee, and to celebrate, she is kindly offering our readers a special discount on their first order (see below)

Caroline explains what inspired her:

‘Having recently set up a speciality coffee business, born from a childhood love of coffee, a whole new world of flavours and aromas has opened up to me and they are very different from the smell and taste of the ‘Italian’ coffee my mother used to brew in our 70s percolator at home.

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Cherry Picked Coffee - coffee cherries above Lake Toba in Sumatra

Welcome to The Vineyard, aka ‘food heaven’ to those in the know, and a wine connoisseur’s paradise.  The Vineyard at Stockcross near Newbury in Berkshire is the creation of Sir Peter Michael, who virtually single-handedly introduced Californian Wines to the UK, and this was the foundation upon which he built this wine lovers and foodies paradise.  You only have to look at their website or their brochure to see what is most important thing here and, and that is WINE.

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The Vineyard at Stockcross

The Vintage Magazine wrote about the Hotel du Vin Group and Robin Hutson in a previous article, called ‘The Revolutionary of the British Hotel Industry’, click here, and this article is about his partner, Gérard Basset, OBE and the hotel which he built, called ‘Hotel TerraVina, but first ‘a brief history’.

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Hotel TerraVina

One of the joys of shopping in a cathedral city like Winchester is the abundance of independent shops, restaurants, cafes and bars run mostly by the owners, so that you develop a close relationship with them and in many cases you become friends as well as customers. I also have huge sympathy for the independent retailer battling against all the problems which confront them, such as avaricious landlords, unpredictable bankers, VAT inspections,the cost of staff, and the problems of physically getting customers to your shop despite the difficulties of ‘one-way’ systems, restrictions on parking, and the vicissitudes of the English climate.

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Winchester Cathedral

Sardinian cuisine for international customers in one of the most expensive residential areas on the planet; that is the recipe for success enjoyed by the owners of OLIVO.

However, before I embark on this restaurant review, let me share with you some history about the area in which this group of restaurants is situated, namely Belgravia.

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Olivocarne in Belgravia

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit a few biodynamic wine producers in the Mosel region in Germany and later on also had the privilege to taste biodynamic wines from some top producers while I was in France. The same word that I heard over and over again from these producers was “vitality”. They believe that their vineyards are full of life and their wines show abundant vitality. This is a very intriguing concept, and as I now understand, is in fact the essence of biodynamic viticulture.

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Just over a year ago, we published a review of Novikov, called ‘The Russians are Coming’, about the Russian-owned complex of two restaurants (Asian and Italian), and a large Bar and Lounge at a lower mezzanine level at 50, Berkeley Street in the heart of Mayfair, because it was already establishing itself as ‘the’ place to see and be seen, and on our recent visit it was evident that this remains the case.

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Asian Restaurant Novikov open kitchen and display of fresh ingredients