Red Carnation Hotels

PRESS ROOM

5 Sommelier's Dinner

16/08/2007

Summer Lodge, the luxurious Relais & Châteaux hotel in Evershot Dorset, has long been famous for the Wine Dinners it holds on the first Tuesday of each month. On Tuesday 7 August these regular vinous gatherings took a new twist when the hotel’s celebrated sommelier Eric Zwiebel, runner up at the Best Sommelier of the World Competition 2007, invited a few of his friends to help him present a wine event with a difference.

‘5 Sommeliers’ brought together a collection of the country’s most discerning noses in an evening of wine fun and fine cuisine. Eric’s guests were Mathieu Longuerre, 2000 UK champion and currently cellar master at La Trompette; Dmitri Menard of the Hotel du Vin group, a Master Sommelier since 2003; Emmanuel Hardonnier, Chef Sommelier at The Glasshouse; plus two of Red Carnation Hotels’ finest – Ben Wolf, Eric’s understudy at Summer Lodge and semi-finalist in this year’s UK championship, and Nicolas Clerc, Head Sommelier at the five star Milestone Hotel in Kensington and the outright winner of this year’s Ruinart competition.

Between the six of them – they may have terrific palates but we suspect arithmetic isn’t a strong point – they concocted a fiendishly entertaining blind tasting test that had a full house of 72 diners enthralled by its intoxicating complexity. Each sommelier chose a wine to accompany part of the spectacular meal prepared by Summer Lodge’s brilliant chef Stephen Titman, and all were determined to make life as interesting as possible for the guests. Between the Portuguese sparkling wine served as an aperitif and the Licor de Tannat from Uruguay served with dessert, the guests thoroughly enjoyed failing to identify superb wines from Greece, Savoie, and Oregon. As one happy diner commented, ‘the great thing about tasting unusual wines like these is that you need more than just the one glass of each to give yourself a fighting chance, and our hosts certainly gave us every opportunity to do so. I can’t pretend I troubled the scorers, but we all had a fantastic time trying’. 

Eric intends to make this an annual event, with a similar format – and even more fun – next year. In the meantime the monthly Wine Dinners will be continuing as usual, with Tuesday 4 September devoted to the Vigne & Vini wines of Puglia-based 3rd generation winemaker Cosimo Varvaglione. For full details on the Wine Dinners and all Summer Lodge events visit www.summerlodgehotel.com

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