Wartime Cognac
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Hundreds of bottles of De Haartmann Cognac recovered from the wreck of a Swedish steamer sunk by a German U-boat in the First World War are to be put up for sale more than a century later.
Richard WoodardJune 21, 2022
The French shipment of 600 bottles of De Haartman & Co Cognac – plus 15 boxes of Bénédictine liqueur – is believed to have been destined for Tsar Nicholas II, but was intercepted in the Baltic Sea and sunk by a German submarine in May 1917.
Now Cognac house Birkedal Hartmann has refilled 300 of the recovered bottles with Cognac dating from the early 1900s, using packaging identical to the original, and is selling them for €9,000 each.
The wreck of the SS Kyros was discovered by Swedish explorer Peter Lindberg in 1999, but only in 2019 were salvage experts able to finish exploring it fully and recover its cargo, using a specialist salvage vessel, divers and…
National Restaurant Awards 2022 Announced
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The top spot was taken by Welsh two-Michelin-starred Ynyshir, with Noble Rot winning Wine List of The Year for a record fourth consecutive time
The announcement of the National Restaurant Awards 2022 again confirmed London’s supremacy in the British dining scene. The capital occupies 60 out of the 100 best restaurant spots, as well as seven of the top 10. The two leading restaurants, however, will require London foodies to travel and attest to the vibrancy of the British scene as a whole: Ynyshir in Machynlleth, Powys (Wales) and Moor Hall in Aughton, Lancashire, occupy the first and second spots respectively.
Led by chef Gareth Ward, a protégé of the Nottinghamshire-based Sat Bains, and run by Ward’s Ward’s partner Amelia Eriksson, Ynyshir’s ‘ingredient led, flavour driven, fat fuelled and meat obsessed’ cuisine has been rewarded for ‘a peculiar but effective marriage of top-quality produce, Asian flavours and unusual…
Bordeaux 2021, a surprising vintage given the premise, especially for whites. But with no standouts
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In terms of climate and production, the latest vintage in Bordeaux has gone down in the annals as a cool and wet one, marked by June’s rains and plummeting temperatures in July and August, for a total production of 3.7 million hectoliters, 14 percent less than 2020. And if the trade has already crowned Château Margaux, and now expects a price drop - ex négociant - of around 2.7 percent compared to 2021, from the en primeur tastings come the first reports from international critics, from Jane Anson (Bordeaux correspondent of “Decanter”) to Neal Martin and Antonio Galloni of “Vinous”, from Jean-Marc Quarin, among the top experts on Bordeaux wines in France, to James Suckling.For the Hong Kong-based critic, the 2021, a difficult vintage, turned out to be “easy” in the end, despite having “offered winemakers virtually every calamity imaginable, including spring frost, mildew, botrytis, rain, lack of sunlight and low temperatures in the …