Wine for picnics
Above: Wine
“…it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden” Elizabeth Bowen. 1899-1973.
There was no wine in the original garden and that would certainly have made a picnic pretty futile. Let’s face it, even in the most erudite and beautiful company, with lobster claws and freshly baked bread to eat, a picnic would only be half an event without many-a-drop of fermented grape juice.
It’s not, however, all that easy, given the breath-taking array of wines available these days, to decide which to take on your perfect picnic. At the instruction of our illustrious new Editor, on your behalf of course, I have spent the last couple of weeks sitting in some of Oxfordshire’s most beautiful countryside, often in the rain, testing wines for picnic suitability. It has led me to some interesting conclusions.
The first thing I realised was that, when you are out in the open, there is a myriad of smells to compete with the food and wine for your attention. It is therefore important to make sure your supplies are up to the job.
I also came to understand that, far from picnics being an easy way to entertain and amuse people, the standard of food and wine really has to be, at the very least, as high as you would expect to produce at a dinner party at home; simpler of course, but nonetheless of the highest possible quality. It’s not really any good throwing a couple of ham sandwiches and packets of crisps in a plastic bag and expecting your companions to make do. They will just spend the time complaining about the hard ground and endless insects. You have to stun them with fabulous flavours.
Out of the several picnics I have had, a close to perfect event has taken shape.
Imagine a four course meal, each with a different wine, taken, in this case, from several more than four attempts.
Remember that when you arrive at your chosen spot it will take you a while to set up. Your guests will need a drink while you struggle with the rugs and Tupperware. Give them a drop of Prosecco, a wonderful light sparkling wine from the North East of Italy. Have it at the top of your hamper with some glass flutes which you will be able to use for all your wines. Not perfect, I agree, but even I won’t ask you to take a different glass for each wine and the flute is a good general glass to use. You will have chilled the wine at home and, if you don’t have an endless supply of frozen sleeves for the bottles, you will have wrapped it in wet newspaper. (We enjoyed ours at the top of Shotover Hill, just outside Oxford.)
Our best first course was a homemade Spanish omelette with a fantastic Riesling D’Alsace. The touch of sweetness and spice was a great with the egg and potato. (we were overlooking Chinnor from Bledlow Ridge at the time)
Whilst sitting in the wonderful beech woods in Christmas Common, enjoying the bluebells, we ate rare roast beef and salad with a delicious Beaujolais Villages; the perfect picnic red wine as it doesn’t need to be warm. It’s much more difficult to get a red wine at the right temperature for al-fresco eating than a white. Beaujolais is terrific slightly cold.
Having spent too much time in France we eat our cheese course before our pudding. Oxford Blue, Wensleydale and a great goat’s cheese from Norsworthy were surprisingly wonderful with a glass of Brugnion Champagne. All the rules go out of the window when you dine in the open. ( Maybe it had something to do with the view down the regatta course in Henley)
By a million miles our best pudding was my brother’s Tarte Aux Pommes, eaten in delicate slivers with a powerful Muscat de Beaume de Venise from the Rhone Valley. This is a fortified sweet wine which handles the open air better than any other sweet white I know. ( I have to admit this was eaten in our own garden )
So there you are. Choose your place, (I particularly recommend the Chiltern beech woods), and have a crack at the perfect picnic. The wines and where you can find them are listed here. To borrow from an old Irish toast, “In Heaven there is no wine, drink it all here on earth.”
Robin Shuckburgh is a former wine merchant and runs a smart Oxfordshire B&B. Visit
www.thecoachhousebampton.co.uk for more information.