Wine, food, cooking and accessories

Whether you’re an amateur chef or the kind of person who just eats to live – you can help the environment by composting while you cook.

Brian Turner shows you how easy it is to cut down on the rubbish sent to landfill in this short film.

Well done to everyone who correctly entered our Chocolate quiz and congratulations to Valerie Mitchell who wins a box of our 24 hand-made chocolate truffles.

“I just wanted to thank-you all for a really good day yesterday. We all enjoyed it – the facilities were ideal for our needs, the food was excellent and the chocolate making was wonderful – there were a few poorly looking people this morning from eating too many chocolates.

We shall certainly be recommending you to any colleagues who want to do something similar in the future and maybe we will come back to try bread making.”

Kathryn S.

We have added to our range of personalised wine labels with the introduction of a “Party” collection and adding to our ever popular range of romantic designs. Some of the new label designs include :

With prices starting at just £10.00 for a bottle of Australian wine with your own message label now is a great time to send an extra special gift as a thank you, reward or gift. Don’t forget you add your own message and we will even add your own photo or logo. Our designers take your information and create a label especially for you and send it back for you to see and approve before printing and sending.

If you order a bottle of wine with the label we will apply the label for you – or you can order just the personalised wine labels from us and stick to your own bottles.

View the full range of personalised wine labels.

With its freshness and vitality, Petit Chablis, Chablis Wines’ premier appellation, is anything but small
A fresh, dry, tangy wine, Petit Chablis is the perfect accompaniment for light snacks, barbecues, brunches and picnics. For wine lovers, it goes beautifully with pressed or cooked cheeses, such as Gruyère, or fresh goat’s cheese. It compliments marinated fish and shellfish perfectly, and can also be paired with the local specialities of the Burgundy region, such as ham with chopped parsley or smoked salmon.

With a floral bouquet and citrus notes on a mineral base, the particular characteristics of this appellation are a result of the combination of a unique limestone soil and a specific climate due to the exposure of the plateau where the chardonnay grape is planted.

Petit Chablis accounts for 16% of the Chablis production. It is best enjoyed cool (between 8 and 10°C) and while still relatively young (less than two years old). Among the three other appellations, Petit Chablis is excellent value for money and will delight all gourmet food lovers.

Read more about Petit Chablis

To help you locate your wine packaging in an instant we have introduced a portfolio viewer on the Wine Schoppen website. This provides at a single glance all the card boxes and wood wine boxes we manufacture allowing you quick and easy access to our extensive range.

Card Packaging
Wood box packaging
Wine bags
Wine postal boxes

Wales should promote its wine, cider and beer industries to mirror the success of countries like New Zealand, according to a committee of National Assembly members.

A plan is needed to realise the economic potential of the homegrown drinks industry, the cross party rural development sub committee said in a report.

Committee Chair Rhodri Glyn Thomas said: “The key message that this inquiry has highlighted is that what is potentially an extremely lucrative industry for Wales is hugely under-developed and in need of direction.”

He said people only needed to look at the examples of wine in New Zealand, whisky in Scotland and Guinness and Baileys in Ireland to see the economic impact a well-marketed drinks industry with a strong national identity could have.

Read full story on Harpers

Learn to bake like granny with our traditional bakery course at Coghlans Cookery School in Chesterfield. The course typically covers a selection of items such as apple pie, banana bread, fruit scones, carrot cake and Victoria sandwich cake.

You will bake at least 4 items and decorate them if needed – leaving with a selection for your friends and family.

The Traditional Bakery Course is £150.00 per person and runs from 9.30am to 4.30pm. Book now.

With the World Cup now out of the way everyone at the brewery is gearing up for the impending move to the new production brewery in Blackwall Lane.

The new state-of-the-art brewhouse will instantly quadruple Meantime’s production capability and enable them to continue satisfying the demand from our thirsty customers for their award-winning range of draught and bottled beers as they continue to outgrow the current Penhall Road site.

The photos below detail some of the progress being made on the site including the arrival of the brand new Lauter Tun (left) in June and the new brewhouse (right). By the end of the Summer Meantime Brewery hope to have the first beer brewed at Blackwall Lane packaged into keg and bottle and are busy building stock at the current brewery ahead of a four-week shutdown.

Tasting Notes:
An enticing wine that will awaken your senses from the very first encounter. Leather, boysenberry and sweet spices combine. The supple palate with its transparent flavours of red fruit and earthy textures leads to a finish that is both balanced and intriguing.

Vineyards:
Grapes for this wine were sourced from the southern side of the Wairau Valley including the Brancott, Fairhall and Ben Morven sub-regions and from the Barracks vineyard (located in the Omaka Valley) for the first time. The soils are aged alluvial gravels that are relatively free draining, with some clay content. This soil structure allows a relatively consistent availability of water to the vines throughout the summer months, minimising water stress to the pinot noir vines. All vines were pruned and trained to two-caned, vertically shoot positioned canopies. Average yields were approximately 6 tonnes/hectare. Much hand work for shoot thinning and bunch thinning was required during the season.

The Growing Season:
Idyllic flowering weather led to excellent set in all varieties and bloomed into a bountiful crop. A warm summer followed and the season finished close to the long-term average in terms of heat summation, sunshine hours and rainfall. The exceptionally dry ripening season was punctuated by two rain events during the second half of harvest, producing many a grey hair and speeding up the picking. All vineyards were picked in just over a month and the vintage was completed earlier than ever before.

Harvest:
Seven clones of pinot noir were hand harvested according to individual ripeness, with the first picked on March 20 and the last on April 11. Fruit was received at the winery in exceptional condition and composition averaged 24.5 Brix, pH 3.27 and acidity of 8.7g/l.

Vinification:
All fruit was de-stemmed into open top stainless steel tanks and, after a pre-fermentation cold soaking period of several days, the fermentations started with naturally occurring yeast. The caps were plunged during fermentation to aid colour and flavour extraction. Following an average period of three weeks on skins, the batches were drained and lightly pressed before being transferred into French oak barrels, approximately half of which were new. Malolactic fermentation was complete by early summer. After nearly a year ageing in oak, the individual components were blended in late February and the wine was then lightly fined with egg whites for clarity prior to bottling in June 2010. The final blend consists of 30% clone 777, 30% clone 667, 13% Abel clone, and the remainder a mix of Dijon clones. Final analysis shows the wine to have 14% v/v alcohol, pH of 3.60 and acidity of 5.5g/l..