Beer Tastings

Are You Tasting the Pith? - 9th May 04

Meantime Chocolate, AdiAdi, Tesco's Picpoul de Pinet

Meantime Chocolate Beer

A relatively abstemious week in the BeerBoy household, although of course "relatively" is the key word here.

I'd had this bottle of Meantime Chocolate knocking around for a few weeks, waiting for the right moment to trease it gently open and share it with my better half. However, I finally cracked under the pressure of trying to judge that moment, opened it and drank it myself in front of the snooker one evening.

And? Well, "and?" was sort of how I felt. It smelt great, nice and richly malty, with a clear hint of milk chocolate, and the initial palate-burst was similar, but the flavours seemed to get lost slightly, petering out a bit too soon for my taste. The 6.5% abv beer seemed initially to have a good full body and mouthfeel, but sort of evaporates a bit on the tongue, The chocolate taste lingered, but didn't quite quite work synchronously with the beer flavour - it felt a bit of a superfluous add-on.

Having said this, it would be great mid-afternoon with some cakes, or perhaps even some cinnamon toast.

AdiAdi

One of the last refugees from "a recent trade fair"^TM, AdiAdi is "the new Cobra", a beer with an impeccable pedigree, brewed from "the finest ingredients" (why do people use this phrase? Are they implying that other beers are made with brewery-floor sweepings?) in Bangalore, and imported to this nation of curry-loving mongrels.

And indeed it is the new Cobra. Light, not too gassy, fairly inoffensive, with a clean zestiness that works fairly well against against the rich spiciness of a curry. The 5% alcohol by volume lends a certain palate cleansing weight to the proceedings, and given the choice, I would plump for this again, if only to support the practice of importing rather than brewing under licence. My only gripe is that it could do with a few more hops to work really well with a curry.

Tesco Picpoul de Pinet

Picpoul de Pinet is a grape that has been cultivated in the Languedoc since Roman times, but is still a little known (dare I say cult>) grape. However, its appearance on the shelves of our biggest multiple grocer (under a Stelvin closure, no less) means that someone has taken notice. Should we do the same?

Picpoul is never going to be a grape that has the crossover potential of, for example, viognier; it just doesn't have that obvious fat flavour, and will forever be an interesting alternative ("a charming trinket" as Hugh Johnson says) for those of us that seek that sort of thing. But is this example worth seeking out?

Well, I think so. It has a super-bright appearance, and a pleasing light, clean aroma, predominantly citrus (lemon), but with delicate floral hints (elder, jasmine). Across the tongue, you find that is is just fractionally off dry, with a slightly heavy, oily palate reminiscent of a light viognier, and a dry orange-blossom finish.