Drink your Words
By Rob Buckhaven, Rathfinny Brand Ambassador
Coinciding with the launch of his new book, The Alcorithm, Rathfinny Brand Ambassador, award-winning drinks writer and king of tasting notes, Rob Buckhaven, recommends the perfect food pairings to enjoy with Rathfinny sparkling wines during the festive season.
What a frantic few weeks it’s been, in a good way, with the launch of our new vintage Rathfinny Rosé 2018 and the publication of my debut book, The Alcorithm. Did I mention my book?
It’s actually a seamless link, as our Classic Cuvée 2017 has now undergone almost an additional year in bottle and is showing more savoury, developed notes. Meanwhile, our brand new Rosé 2018 has stylistically returned to that ‘Wimbledon-in-a-glass’ flavour profile of wild strawberries and Chantilly cream, reminiscent of our early releases, and well, my book is all about the flavours found in drinks.
Now, far be it from me to dwell on my book as I know this post is primarily about Rathfinny Sussex Sparkling wines, but I’ll briefly take you through why I wrote The Alcorithm. For someone as obsessed with drinks flavours as I am, as anyone at Rathfinny will tell you, the opportunity to write a book on the subject was too good to be passed up. To contextualise, I also write the tasting notes for our sparkling wine labels and manage to conjure up florid descriptors of ‘mock orange’, ‘Japanese wineberries’ and ‘fennel pollen’. ‘Floral’, ‘fruity’ and ‘spicy’ just won’t cut it for me. Don’t get me started on the ‘luminescent saffron’ appearance of our latest Classic Cuvée, or we’ll be here for hours!
So, we’ve learnt that I’ve always been a frustrated writer with overdramatic tendencies, but whether I’m banging on about wild strawberry notes in sparkling rosé or truffle-adjacent flavours found in aged Pinot Noir-dominated fizz, I wanted to get to the bottom of how these notes came to be in the first place and how on earth they made their way into wine, spirits, beer or any other beverage for that matter.
