Burgundy, Merlot, Sherry, and The Square - Urban Junkies has teamed up with wine guru extraordinaire Tom Harrow to bring you the Wine Chap's useful Wine Tips.

DrinkOut : Konstam at the Prince Albert

King’s Cross. Once a destination for the base satisfaction of but one appetite. Yet with the 5 star Renaissance Marriot hotel under construction, St Pancras International’s almost 100m long Champagne Bar and TV’s Urban Chef, Oliver Rowe, at The Prince Albert, there are now plenty of reasons for the epicure to linger.

At the latter, the dishes are simple with solidly English flavours and sensitive use of herbs. Ingredients are seasonal (but where isn’t these days?), local (sourcing 85% of produce from within the M25) and relatively inexpensive (the most expensive dish was pan-fried brill at £15.50). In keeping with the menu, the wine list shows a loyalty to English wines, whose previous appeal was mainly as novelty souvenirs for tourists, akin to our penchant for cheap sombreros, over-priced wood carvings and plastic donkeys. 

Yet Chapel Down’s Flint Dry NV, a blend of English varietals, was fragrantly Germanic on the nose but more zesty and chalky on the palate, pairing effectively with both a robust Garlic soup, and the more delicate skate cheeks with lemon & lovage. Denbies’ Redlands, from Pinot and Dorfelder (not a down-tempo remix by an Austrian dub duo) was similar to a light Loire red and not much more exciting, but offered refreshing bite to a bacon, goat’s cheese and pea shoot omelette, and a sorrel & Dirty Vicar tart. Getting with the programme, I suggested to Oliver that he might consider putting Mead on the drinks list:  it’s lightly-honeyed spiciness would work equally-well with the selection of cheeses or the excellent orange & clove crème caramel, and would certainly be a tastier gimmick than most English reds.

KONSTAM @ The Prince Albert
2 Acton Street, WC1X 9NA
Tel: 020 7833 5040 

GrapeVine : Diageo Commercial

Ok, so you’ve seen the ‘Night to remember… or a night to forget?’ campaign.  Is it a worthy attempt by the largest global drinks conglomerate to encourage responsible drinking? Or, given that a night on their Archers, Baileys, Smirnoff Ice, and Jose Cuervo is a dictionary definition binge, is it just a vaguely amusing effort at damage limitation?

Certainly, for girls of my acquaintance, three glasses of rosé and being drunkenly ogled at a party does not constitute a night to remember (a passable Monday lunch perhaps). Flashing a room full of strangers, meanwhile, dancing crazily on tables, and coming to on a random sofa is guaranteed to leave haunting Kodak moments and Facebook immortality. As for the boy’s version, how dull do you have to be to not recall fondly nights on the lash, complete with drunken brawling and sleeping in doorways covered in chili sauce? But perhaps I’m missing the subtle marketing message…

by TH

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.